Cem Arslan
Amateur military historian and fiction writer
Public Service Announcement: Over my several year existence on Quora, I have learned much in how to write a good answer, and I continued to learn of the facts and realities of the situations I cover. This means that today, no small amount of my earlier answers do not match to the standards I currently hold myself to, whether because of factual errors and inconsistencies, wrong phrasing, a lacking explanation of the context, opinions I no longer advocate and shouldn’t have advocated, or simply poor writing. I greatly apologize for all of those that may have happened in the past.
As of current, many of those answers are under review, and many of them will either be deleted or edited. Sadly, I cannot get to comments, so the most I can do is to disavow them. For more on this topic, see Cem Arslan's answer to What would you like to convey to all your Quora followers?
Disclaimer: Many of my answers are written assuming my readers are grown adults with coherent moral compasses, that do not need me telling them what to feel to be able to pass moral judgment on the events I cover. I do not always insert my own moral judgment on the events under scrutiny except if it is directly relevant to the question. It does not mean I do not have a personal moral judgment on the topic in question.
Welcome. Since you’re here, I presume you have heard of me.
There isn’t too much to be said about me, in all honesty. I’m an amateur writer hoping one day to be a published writer, and avid reader to the point of obsession. I have also used to be a fairly arrogant git in the past before realizing that attitude does nobody any favours, and certainly did me none. I possess a deep interest in military history and fiction of all sorts, which are my main topics of writing here, but time and again I stray into other subjects. In my writing, I strive always to be true, within the best of my knowledge and wisdom- if I ever fail in doing so, as I have in the past and surely will again, know that it was not out of malice or a desire to mislead, but a sincere conviction in the truth of my words, for I can only write within the bounds of my ever-expanding understanding of the topics. Where I am wrong, I will admit it as soon as I realize and correct it best as I am able.
Learning is ever a journey for improvement, and one can only claim to be getting better, and those far wiser I have failed nevertheless to find perfection. To strive for perfection is noble, but to believe to have found it is folly.
History is an exacting art, and one of the foremost lessons any student of it does best to learn is to never rely on a single source. So if you’re here, reading this, I’m glad you are but by all means, do not treat me as your only source of argument and fact. By listening to more ideas, even if you disagree, your perspective will broaden.
If I am ever banned, see Cem Arslan's answer to If you get banned on Quora, what do you want to say? for my official farewell.
Warning: Recently, I’ve been adopting a significantly more liberal policy towards blocking or deleting comments. I don’t do either for honestly expressing sincere beliefs, even those I disagree in. But being intentionally obtuse, inane attempts at ‘gotcha’ that make no logical sense, repeatedly using logical fallacies, or advocating for or defending criminal activities(especially those motivated by ethnic hatred) are on the chopping block. In short, don’t go fucking denying the Holocaust to me.
Be warned.
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I have an announcement to make that needs desperately to be said and heard.
A few hours ago, I was writing a ticket to Quora to delete this account immediately, without the typical two week grace period, along with all content associated with it. I was one moment from sending it.
And I was very tempted to do it. But if I had, I would have ran away, without saying these words that I need to say. And I owe these words to anyone I have failed.
In all my time in Quora, I have given myself one singular mission: to write history, with honesty, truth, and integrity. I have written many answers widely considered exceptional in pursuit of said goal. I have gained fame for strictly adhering to it. And in the past few days, I was confronted with the fact that I have failed.
I have written before on just how much I have come forward in all my years of writing on Quora, in every way, shape or form. Now, I write better, in every way that matters: with more nuance, more fact, less pointless spectacle, and less arrogance. However, my memory has never been particularly good, and I have only just come to realize just how much better I write today, or, more relevant to the topic, just how much worse I wrote years ago.
As you might have realized by the PSA that went up on my profile a few days ago, I decided to undertake a review process of my old answers. In doing so, I found myself well and truly horrified.
To put it with the brutal honesty I ought to, many of my earliest answers and comments are truly horrifying. Problems range across a wide spectrum of a very off-putting brand of arrogance, a very lackluster quality of writing, a not insignificant amount of historical errors, imprecise and flawed phrasing, and rarest but sadly worst of all, a few very questionable conclusions and opinions with some disturbing implications. I have found myself staring at answers and comments that I would mercilessly slam today had I seen them written by someone else.
But the most unsettling fact about those is the fact that this is content out there, under my name- a name that today has a reputation for accurate and well researched content. It is that reputation that today retroactively stands behind some content that is neither accurate nor well researched. Thus, it represents a catastrophic and unacceptable failure of my self-declared mission: the promotion of pure and unvarnished truth.
In the past, I had resolved to let such answers stand, as a reminder to myself of just how far I had come. But that was a decision taken before I realized that the only thing wrong about them wasn’t simply a quality of writing: a badly written answer that is otherwise true will not harm anyone. Factual errors, arrogant attitudes, or some implications this world is better off without are a completely different matter, mostly borne out of past ignorance or arrogance, ironic given my own contempt of those. A not insignificant amount of my past content, especially at the earliest of my writing, is a total betrayal of my current ideals. It’s not the majority of what turns me off today: most of that is simply true but poorly phrased, or pointless, cheap, short answers that don’t add anything to anyone. Most of the problematic answers are simply crude, single-sentence statements that don’t mean anything.
But there are things that I would never have written today, and shouldn’t have written back then, things I do not want backed by my name and reputation not just because they were written badly, but because they were wrong. It doesn’t matter they are nowhere near the majority of what needs to be gotten rid of. Even one such answer, even one that barely anyone ever saw, is too much.
I cannot accept this.
And this, above all, is why this account isn’t deleted, even though it would be a convenient and effective way of making sure that my name no longer gives legitimacy to my mistakes. Because I do not simply wish to bury my mistakes quietly and without a word. I wish to disown them. I wish for every one of my followers to know that I have discovered and recognized my failure, that I will correct it, and I will adhere to even stricter standards in the future so that it will not be repeated. Every single answer or comment or other piece of content that I manage to find that does not adhere to the standards I today hold myself to are in the process of deletion or major edits. I fully realize I won’t find everything, especially since there is no easy way to track comments and even if there were it would be a herculean effort. But I will do my best. It will take long, given my busy schedule, but I have already started, and I hereby disown and disavow any past statements made that do not fit my current standards of moral, neutral and accurate scholarship that I do not manage to find and terminate.
The truth, without varnish or embellishment or manipulation. This was my mission. In the distant past, I have failed it severely. I apologize humbly for having done so, and I state firmly that I will not do so again.
I thank you all, for the support you have shown me for so long, the trust you have placed in me, and the journey to more nuanced knowledge that you have helped me on. And I promise to hold myself to ever stricter standards and continue to provide the best within my power to provide. The errors of the distant past will be corrected, and will not be repeated.
Ad astra per aspera.
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I feel the same about many of my answers. And I have even more of them. I can’t delete them all. I can only do my best going forward.
It’s going to be the same when you’re a physician. You will realize that you can’t take back your early treatment plans. You can only do your best with the patients yo
… (more)Cem, while I cannot claim to have known this feeling with the same intensity, or in the same circumstances, I can certainly relate to it - having gone as far as setting a literal ritual pyre for works I could no longer live with. It’s a very bad, very guilt-laden place to be at, to be sure, but one
… (more)I might end up making a pyre myself- although it’ll be a virtual one.
I’m contemplating just having the account deleted and making a new one. A clean slate.
Alfredo PerozoI can certainly see the appeal, and the ease that comes with it. I doubt it hasn’t occured to most if not all to do that at some point. I have a reputation of advising people to avoid doing anything too final, if at all possible; and burning a few blocks of paper known to none other than oneself is quite less final than terminating a Quora account altogether. Give it a couple years, and the clean slate might grow to make you contemplate deleting it too. And my guess is one or two reedition processes, even if burdensome, are better that one or two deletions…
Simple. Because cancer is not a disease. Cancer is a group of more than a hundred diseases, many of which have as much in common with each other as a fruit fly does with a pigeon: after all, they both fly, no?
Put simply, ‘cancer’ means an abnormal, autonomous, continuous and invasive growth of cells. There are, without exaggeration, dozens of diseases and mechanisms that eventually result in the clinical picture we name cancer. In that regard, it’s as much a disease as a cough is: the end product of countless barely related diseases.
A cough can be the result of simple irritation, common cold, bacterial pneumonia, COPD, lung cancer, and a whole bunch of other things. None of these is treated with the same treatment as another. For the cancer, it works exactly the same. Let alone being able to treat all the root causes with a single treatment, we can’t even treat the resulting tumours with the same treatment for they can be radically different: radiotherapy, which is very effective against leukemias, is very ineffective on renal cell carcinomas.
I’m not even talking about treating the mechanism and the root cause: that causes only more divergence. Various types of cancers can be and are caused by a vast variety of things, including chemical exposure(vast majority of lung cancers), infections(Kaposi’s sarcoma), radiation exposure(many skin cancers), inherited mutations(Lynch syndrome), chronic inflammation(esophageal cancer), autoimmune diseases, hormonal diseases… and it’s rare for the cause to be one of these. Many cancers are caused by a complex algorithm of causes.
‘Cancer’ isn’t a disease. It’s an abstract group of over a hundred diseases that are so radically different from each other that they can only be cured individually. To expect a miracle one size fits all cure just because the end result of all cancers are somewhat similar when looked at very superficially is same as expecting the same treatment to work on both bacterial pneumonia and COPD because they both make you cough. That’s not how it works.
Not to mention, we can cure cancer. Not all cancers, and not always, but we have valid treatments for nearly every kind of cancer. They are imperfect, rough, and unpleasant, but they save lives. Many cancers caught at earlier stages can be cured permanently, with extremely low recurrence rates. Many cancers even at later stages can be feasibly put into remission, giving a patient years upon years of life that they would not have without modern medicine. Progress is being made.
There are people on this site old enough to remember the sixties. 1960’s- they’re not too far into history. It is not too far when leukemia used to be an absolute death sentence: where the five year survival rate measured barely above ten percent.
Today, approximately seven out of ten leukemia patients survive the first five years after their diagnosis. A not insignificant percentage of them achieve complete remissions and cures. Is the fight against leukemia over? Hell no, but it’s being won. Slowly, but it’s being won.
That’s how cancer is and will be cured. Not by some miracle treatment that within one day will make cancer a worry of the past: I would cheer if that were to happen, but in so far as today’s science can tell you, it cannot. The war against cancer is waged inch by inch, step by step, hammering away at that monstrous edifice. Tearing it down piece by piece, until one day, we will have to fear it no longer.
That day is far in the future. But progress is being made inexorably, and that progress is saving lives every year.
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I must correct one serious misconception! Cancer is not at all a disease in the traditional sense of the word. It’s not contagious. It is not transmitted between people by touching a person or a surface; it’s not airborne. Cancer is your own body cells that have gone haywire and won’t stop replicati
… (more)I would ask that if cures are being withheld, then why are billionaires still dying of cancer? Surely they are the ones who would pay anything to have access to these secret ‘cures’. I had a conversation about this conspiracy theory with one guy who believes in it and it was the most frustrating thi
… (more)You should realize, of course, that Mike Wilson probably doesn’t have a husband, and writes insincere questions by the thousands.
That would almost certainly be true.
But I’m not writing this answer for Mike Wilson. I’m writing it for whoever sees it in their feed and has the question ‘Why isn’t cancer cured?’ in their minds. If this answer caught one such person and made them understand, it was worth writing.
I blocked and reported that account almost two years ago. Shame they haven't banned it.
First off, about the blocking detachments: if the image in your head is Enemy at the Gates, dispel that image.
For one, even if nobody high enough in Soviet command to matter realized just how monumentally stupid that would be, fact is there weren’t enough ‘blocking detachments’ to do that. Per Order 227, three to five detachments of up to 200 men were to be founded within each army and assigned in the rear area of divisions suspected to be likely to break: it should be readily apparent that that’s not enough men to keep pulling Enemy at the Gates.
Instead, the blocking detachments operated in the same way as the rear area detachments of the German Feldgendarmerie: their purpose was to hunt combat units’ rear areas for malingerers, deserters, and units retreating or routing without orders. At which point, they had discretion in dealing with such personnel; but execution was rarely the first choice: the majority were returned to their units.
I do not think anyone ever made a full, complete study of exactly how many Soviet personnel were killed by the ‘blocking detachments’ specifically. Throughout the entire war, a total of 135.000 Soviet personnel were tried and executed by court martials: this number includes both proper, rear area military courts and more ‘drumhead’ style trials conducted in the field. Naturally, not all of these executions were the work of the blocking detachments, who were far from being the only disciplinary organization in the Soviet military: in fact, the blocking detachments were probably responsible for less than half of those, especially since this death toll is for court martials of all causes, including many disciplinary offences that did not fall on the blocking detachments to work against.
On the other hand, and I would like to highlight what I’m about to say is at best an educated guess, there almost certainly were a number of summary executions that should be added on that figure. It almost certainly wasn’t a high number, especially in comparison to the total of 135.000, but I’d expect a few thousand or so executions that did not make it into record for a total of about 140.000, give or take. Again, not all(and probably not the majority) were the work of the ‘blocking detachments’. But nobody, to the best of my knowledge, tried to compile exactly how many was carried out by the blocking detachments.
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Usually, I prefer to not pass judgment on a book that I have not read. But in this case, I will make an exception.
First, let us quote from the book’s description, taken straight from its Barnes and Noble page[1]- I will not quote all of it, but two select pieces:
Although it is true that the six-million figure was declared to be the indubitable truth at this tribunal, it is actually remarkably older. This book shows that the six-million figure dates back to the late 1800s, when Jewish pressure groups were targeting czarist Russia for its anti-Jewish stance, accusing Russia of oppressing and persecuting the six million Jews in Russia, and adopting a “solution” to its “Jewish question” which allegedly consisted of outright extermination. Claims that six million Jews in Europe were suffering to such a degree that millions had died already, while many more millions would face a lingering death, climaxed for the first time during fundraising campaign that started during the FIRST World War and reached its peak in the early and mid-1920s. The New York Times was the main vehicle for such propaganda, which also included well-known buzzwords such as “annihilation,” “extermination” and even the term “holocaust.”
[…] Don Heddesheimer’s book reveals a Jewish-Zionist propaganda pattern that has been used since the late 1800s, first against czarist Russia, then in favor of the Soviet Revolution, next against Nazi Germany, and finally and ever since in favor of Israel.
At this point, you should probably be getting rather concerned about the exact message and claims this book is trying to push. But we’re just starting. Then, after reading the blurb, or probably before it, you notice the title and authors:
I do not think the name ‘Don Heddesheimer’ is famous anywhere except in connection to this book, but the name Germar Rudolf should be more familiar. He’s a German chemist who mostly became famous after a 1991 paper that essentially argued that a chemical analysis of cyanide compounds in Auschwitz’s gas chambers proved that no gassing could have taken place there. Obviously, his paper was scientifically a bust: it’s debatable whether he knew it was bullshit or sincerely believed he was correct, but nevertheless, Rudolf spent a few years peddling Holocaust denial, was convicted of Volksverhetzung in 1995, fled Germany to avoid arrest, was eventually extradited back to Germany by the US in 2005, served just over two years in prison, and returned to the US soon as he left prison.
Naturally, a book about the Holocaust the introduction of which was written by a noted Holocaust denier has to be… extra suspect.
But this isn’t all. Another answer to this question stated that the book’s publisher, Theses & Dissertations Press, pretty much publishes only Holocaust deniers. That answer is accurate in saying so, and this was going to be my next point, but while making sure I didn’t get anything wrong about Germar Rudolf, I found out more about that publisher. Turns out, it’s not surprising at all that Theses & Dissertations Press publishes Holocaust denial: it is founded by none other than Germar Rudolf himself, as an American outlet of Castle Hill Publishers, the publishing company Rudolf founded in Britain after he fled Germany to avoid arrest.
And indeed, Heddesheimer’s The First Holocaust is the sixth book in a 26-book ‘Holocaust Handbooks’ series published by Rudolf’s publishing companies. For the record, authors who wrote books in said series include Germar Rudolf himself, Jürgen Graf(Swiss Holocaust denier, living in exile in Moscow), Arthur Butz(American Holocaust denier and author of the book The Hoax of the Twentieth Century), Carlo Mattogno(Italian writer and editor of multiple major Holocaust denialist publications), Ingrid Weckert(most famous for blaming the Kristallnacht on Jews), and Fred Leuchert(author of the Leuchert Report, a Rudolfesque work of Holocaust denialism).
Yeah.
As I said, I’m not exactly fond of passing judgment on things I’ve not read. But looking at the book’s claims by the book’s own admission, the history of the man who wrote its introduction, the book’s publishing company, and the other books and authors Heddesheimer is rubbing elbows with, I think I can make an exception to my rule of not judging something before reading it, and state that The First Holocaust is, with no real room for doubt, a work of Holocaust denial, and as is typical of such works, has no real historical or academic value.
You’d probably be better off saving your money and time.
Footnotes
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Cem, I want to salute the public service of this post, and commend you for the analytical tone taken throughout.
Thank you, Andrew. I’m glad to hear you approve.
This comment has been deleted · February 19
Cem ArslanYou know, if it looks like a duck, if it swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck… it is probably a duck. I don’t need to butcher and roast and eat the duck to decide that. When you’re writing a book that challenges the prevailing historical stance on a subject, you make sure that you lay your cards down at the start. Your book, right from its description, needs to say ‘the established history is wrong, and this is how, and in this book I will explain this’. In essence, in a work that challenges established history, the book blurb contains the core of the argument. It does in most historical works, to be fair, but in attempts of revisionism it is most important. Heddesheimer’s best argument with which he decided to showcase his book was ‘The Holocaust death toll must be false, because the same figure appeared in false atrocity propaganda before’. Let alone presenting any real, academic proof, this argument isn’t even logical, attempting to argue from nothing more than a coincidence to wage war upon literal mountains worth of proof. If that is Heddesheimer’s best argument, I can imagine that the rest can only be worse.
Entirely hypothetical question as I was completely happy to wipe these hateful morons from my attention about a third of the way through your respectful and considerate answer: what do they hope to achieve?
It was only 5,999,999 PEOPLE (emphasis mine) killed? That’s the lamest possible gotcha. It was
… (more)I mean, all parties have something to hide here, why is it okay for Jews to force Palestinians out of Palestine? Just as Nazi’s wished to do to the Jews from Germany. Besides, the Nationalist Socialist party arose after WWI, which was basically the world preventing Germany from having the first rail
… (more)Andrew BrowningBased on your empty profile I’d be very surprised if your reply is sincere, but I’ll answer anyway: Please don’t bother to answer.
Unlikely.
Hitler had a very carefully constructed public image: and central to this public image was an appearance of ascetic behavior. The public image of Hitler was one wholly and completely dedicated to Germany and his political mission, with no interest in mortal and material indulgences. Propaganda and public relations portrayed him as a man of strikingly modest lifestyle, a chaste figure, one with neither interests nor love beyond his nation. Even his dress enforced this image of modesty- standing next to people like the bemedalled Göring, he dressed strikingly plain and with only, at most, his World War One decorations for ornament.
Although matters of feeling are hard to find evidence for, eyewitness accounts seem to indicate that Hitler genuinely loved Eva Braun: however, the desire to uphold that public image meant Hitler willingly hid that relationship from all but his innermost circle. In so far as most of Germany was concerned, Eva Braun did not exist, nor did her relationship with Hitler.
When stuck in his bunker, with his empire crumbling around him, the Soviet grasp around Berlin, and acutely aware of his death, Hitler realized his reputation and image ceased to matter. He married Eva Braun in the first hours of 29 April, with Bormann and Goebbels as witnesses, and less than two days later the couple killed themselves.
Had Germany won its war, Hitler’s image of modesty, celibacy and abstinence would have continued to matter, and thus, it’s likely Eva Braun would simply remain his lover.
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Not clear that they were actually lovers, or that the brief marriage was consummated.
Otherwise, good answer. The only other thing I would add is that Hitler understood remaining unmarried not only evidenced asceticism, but was something like catnip to a not inconsiderable number of German women.
Many
… (more)Maybe when and if Hitler retires from active work?
He was apparently planning to retire to his hometown at one point, so it’s certainly possible.
I agree he may well have done after retiring, he was known to reward loyalty and Eva Braun was certainly loyal. Though it's also possible she might have committed suicide before Hitler ever retired, she did try at least once before.
Cem ArslanDid she? I can’t remember Braun ever attempting suicide before her successful suicide in 1945(this may be my memory failing me, though)- you may be thinking of Hitler’s half-niece Geli Raubal, who is speculated to have had a sexual relationship with Hitler and who did successfully kill herself.
In essence, the primary charge brought against Julius Streicher was Der Stürmer: the rabidly anti-Semitic tabloid he’d been responsible for publishing and editing for over twenty years since its first issue in April 1923.
It would perhaps be fitting to say that Der Stürmer was one of the most repulsive publications ever put to paper. It was gratuitously vulgar, explicit, unrepentantly hateful, and most importantly, from cover to cover bullshit: Streicher’s philosophy being that if he just spewed enough nonsense often enough, something would stick. The paper’s vulgarity and gratuitousness was such that even multiple leading Nazis themselves were disgusted by Streicher’s style: Schirach forbid Hitlerjugend personnel from reading it in the organization’s facilities, Göring did not permit his staff to read it, and Goebbels tried to outright ban it- of course, it stands to reason that they, especially Goebbels, probably had more of a problem with Der Stürmer’s style than with the purpose.
Hell, when Streicher started claiming Jewishness was inheritable by telegony(a failed theory of heredity that claimed an offspring could inherit traits of the female parent’s previous sexual partners), his claim got denounced by none other than the NSDAP Office of Racial Policy. Seriously, the more you read about Streicher, the more ridiculous it gets.

A group of people gathered before one of the Stürmerkasten: display boxes in which the most recent issue of Der Stürmer was prominently displayed for those that did not have the money to buy it or the time to read it cover to cover. Photo from the German federal archives.
But if so many leading Nazis were against Der Stürmer, how did it manage to continue to exist? Well, for the same reason Streicher managed to save his head from Göring’s rage after the former had an article published in Der Stürmer mocking Göring as impotent- and yes, he did that, too.
Hitler loved Streicher’s newspaper, and regarded the man as a loyal friend. This, combined with support from other prominent men like Himmler and Ley, kept Streicher operating, right up until the last issue of Der Stürmer in February 1945. Even the man’s incredibly odious personal behavior, so much so that he was judged unsuitable for leadership and stripped of his Party offices by the NSDAP’s Committee for Investigation and Settlement(in essence, the Party’s internal tribunal for its own internal affairs), didn’t turn Hitler off from Streicher.
The argument of the Nuremberg prosecution was that Streicher was such a rabid anti-Semite with such an audience, such a virulent hostility, and had played such a role in the spread of anti-Semitism in Germany, that he amounted to an accessory for murder and thus, complicit in it. On one hand, this was a bit of a stretch of international law- from a strictly legalistic point of view, it was a very sketchy sentence. On the other hand, if anyone ever deserved such a stretch in order to convict them, it was Julius Streicher. The man was as repulsive a creature as one could possibly think of, and regardless of the legal accuracy of his sentence the world became a better place when he swung.
The hangman for Streicher, along with the other death sentences given at Nuremberg, was a US soldier by the name of John Woods, who had previously served as executioner in a number of military hangings in France. Woods had gotten that job in France by claiming false past experience as a hangman: thus, he wasn’t particularly experienced in his job.
When time came for Streicher to hang, presumably because of Woods’ inexperience, things did not work out as they normally should in a hanging. Streicher’s neck did not snap, leaving him to choke beneath the platform.
One finds it difficult to muster up sympathy.
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Some accounts of the Beer-Hall Putsch suggest that Streicher may have fired the first shot that day, and this is why Hitler stood by him no matter what he did.
Thanks, John Cate - news to me, but explains a LOT…
Out of (morbid) curiosity: if Streicher was too much for even many of his colleagues’ standards, was anyone on the business too much for even Streicher?
Not as far as I am aware of.
‘Defeated’ probably isn’t the accurate word here: certainly, the Polish military kept fighting long past two weeks after 1 September.
However, two weeks was how long it took for the Polish Army’s all large scale, operationally capable formations to be destroyed, encircled, or rendered ineffective. Poznan and Pomorze Armies were stuck in the Bzura Pocket where they would be annihilated during an attempted breakout. The remnants of the Modlin Army was besieged in Warsaw alongside half of the Narew Operational Group, the other half of which was encircled in Bialystok. The remnants of the Karpaty Army were encircled at Lwow. Krakow Army was pocketed east of the San. Prusy Army was wiped out at Radom, with shattered remnants joining the defense of Warsaw. Of the seven Polish armies at the start of the campaign, only the Lodz Army was somewhat intact, retreating towards Modlin where they would surrender near the end of the campaign.
Two weeks was the point where organized, nation-wide military resistance became impossible for the Polish military. After that, it became a dozen isolated redoubts and broken divisions, fighting desperately and fiercely, but fighting all alone, and doomed to defeat.
Make no mistake here, though. The two weeks may seem a dismal performance: but it needs to be placed in context. For the Wehrmacht, this campaign wasn’t akin to the 1940 French campaign or any of the great operations of the Eastern Front. The German military went into Poland with a degree of material and resource superiority that, save the Balkan campaign of 1941, it would never again have at any front during any major operation. The Polish army, partly mobilized, ill prepared and strung out across a border far too long for them to hope to defend, was facing a military that was more numerous, better equipped, better prepared, and in a not insignificant number of cases better led at the highest echelons.
Right from the very first day, the Polish military was facing an uphill battle it had no hope of winning. Yet, while the overall course of the campaign turned into total catastrophe in a matter of days, at the divisional and regimental level Polish soldiers achieved miracles. At Mlawa, Hel Peninsula, Wizna and many other places they held out and pushed back against great odds.
The speed of the German victory against Poland is often used to disparage the Polish performance in their country’s defense. And while much criticism can be levied against the Polish defense plan as was decided at the highest level of command, which was characterized by a shocking overconfidence in the Polish military’s capabilities, I feel the aforementioned disparagement makes a great disservice to the individuals who fought in the Polish military in 1939.
Faced with the horrifying task of fighting a war against nearly every kind of military and material superiority and with only their own talent, grit and sheer determination to compensate, the Polish soldier fought as good as any human being could possibly be expected to. In fact, that the Polish military had effectively crumbled to little pieces fighting on their own in two weeks only speaks highly of the degree of Polish resolve, for normally, when a nation’s army is splintered to pieces in two weeks and stuffed in countless pockets, one expects such pockets to surrender en masse, seeing further resistance to be pointless. Yet many of such pockets did no such thing; isolated redoubts fought on, day after day, week after week, sometimes all the way to October. Warsaw and Modlin surrendered only in the last days of September. The broken remnants of the Krakow Army east of the San lasted well over a week of encirclement. The few thousand men in the Hel Peninsula only gave up in October.
But unfortunately for Poland, talent, grit and determination, no matter how abundant, can only make up for so much.
The length of the Polish resistance, in essence, has two meanings. On one hand, it is an indictment of the Polish high command, whose ill-preparedness and overconfidence helped fatally compromise the defensive plan on which their country’s survival relied. On the other hand, it’s a glowing crown of accomplishment on the individuals who fought in the ranks of the Polish army, whose sheer tenacity and resolve was the sole reason the Polish campaign extended as far as five weeks.
They fought harder than anyone could ask them to. Those men can hold their heads high in the afterlife.
The Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Warsaw. Once part of the Saxon Palace, it now stands alone, after the rest of the palace was demolished by German sappers after the Warsaw Uprising. Only the Tomb itself was not touched. The Tomb honours Polish war dead in battles dating back to the 972 Battle of Cedynia. Of the nineteen tables that stand there, two are dedicated to battles of the 1939 campaign.
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Did the Germans deliberately spare the Tomb, or was that just coincidental?
Intentionally left standing, as far as I am aware, though I can be wrong.
Steven McReynoldsThat’s what I suspected as well. Thank you.
It looked like this
not exactly “spared”.
Well written, I would also only add that Polish military had not ceased to exist during September campaign.
The exact reason why Poland remained so bloody ground for German officers until very arrival of Soviet troops in 1944 was solely because the same military officers and soldiers who fought in 1
A fair point- one could name the Home Army a direct continuation of the Polish army that had effectively ‘gone to ground’.
Adrian WiechoczekIt is exacly as it happened, though some joined other units - for Home Army was only the strongest, but not the only one - like National Armed Forces, People’s Brigades (agrarians) and later also communist militias. Apart of the communists, all those groups coordinated and recognized London government, though differed on ideology and view for future country.
Funnily enough, I once read in Swedish historian’s book on “The Deluge” war that in 17th century, there were two types of countries - centralized, hard to conquer and easy to hold and decentralized, with strong particularism, easy to conquer but hard to hold. Poland always belonged to second case which is why this country was so much a hell for any invader, despite geography telling otherwise.
Funnily enough, I once read in Swedish historian’s book on “The Deluge” war that in 17th century, there were two types of countries - centralized, hard to conquer and easy to hold and decentralized, with strong particularism, easy to conquer but hard to hold. Poland always belonged to second case which is why this country was so much a hell for any invader, despite geography telling otherwise.
There are two reasons why Mein Kampf reads as a fairly incoherent work.
One, Hitler wasn’t a particularly good author. Writing and oratory are different arts: Hitler’s exceptional talent at the latter did not translate well to the former. Even if one is to disregard the repulsiveness of many of the ideas present in it, the book itself is dull and lacking in coherence- it’s a fairly raw outpouring of Hitler’s thoughts and emotions and feelings, without much structure and order to it. Such style may lend itself well to literary fiction, but not to a political manifesto, and fails to leave behind an impression of coherent vision.
But the second reason is… well, you’re right. Dead on. None of Hitler’s racial theories make sense, nor do most of his political theories.
Hitler’s theories on race make sense only if you take as axiomatic the root points from which they stemmed: the pervasive obsession with race and racial superiority/inferiority that was so frighteningly common in Europe, especially among certain political circles. And today, those root points are, thankfully, regarded as the nonsense they were. The entire ideal is built upon rotten roots, and we today recognize those roots as rotten- thankfully, as if those ideas had been recognized as what they were in their day, the world would be a better place.
Hitler’s racial and political theories were built on the idea of the absolute superiority and inferiority of certain races, and of the inferior races presenting a mortal danger to their superiors. To him and to so many of his contemporaries, that nonsensical idea was absolute truth, on which their entire views were founded.
To us, who thankfully have shed that vile idea, Hitler’s entire racial worldview suddenly ceases to have its roots. It’s left in the air. It does not make sense. When you look at Hitler’s racial theories in Mein Kampf, it looks incomplete, made up, precisely because their roots are a set of beliefs that Hitler took as axiomatic, beliefs that today are rightly regarded as having neither factual accuracy nor moral standing. When read by one that does not share Hitler’s fundamental view on race, the entire thing seems built on foundations that, let alone being lackluster, do not even exist.
You think Mein Kampf doesn’t make sense, because it doesn’t. Congratulations. That is exactly what the book is: an amateurishly written, incoherent manifesto built upon failed ideas.
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Imagine if Donald Trump tried to write a book (without professional editing).
That would be worse, I think, with regards to the quality of writing. Hitler was at least a competent(in fact very competent) orator. Trump isn’t even that.
What will he write about, though? The guy doesn’t even have the intellectual capacity to write a coherent speech, nevermind forming an ideology and writing a book about it…
Charles FaraoneIt wouldn’t matter. His followers can’t read and the ones who can will agree with whatever nonsense he fills the pages with.
He was informed not only by social darwinism but by the malthusian scare.
If I remember correctly just as we are scared by climate change today, people at Hitler's time had real reasons to believe there wouldn't be enough food for everyone, so wars and famine would be inevitable.
Ironically, the Jewis
… (more)He was motivated by hatred of Jews -pure and simple.
It depended on if the marriage happened after 17 September 1935, with the passing of a clarification for the Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honour, itself passed and entered force two days before that.
The aforementioned law contained an explicit ban for any marriages between Jews and ‘Aryan’ Germans- the violation of which was punishable by prison with hard labour. Any children who were born from such a marriage officiated after 17 September 1935 were legally ruled as Jewish, and were thus subject to any and every form of persecution the Reich later chose to enact on their Jewish citizens- including death. In so far as the Third Reich concerned, that child was Jewish: no thought was spared to the presence of a German parent.
The law was not retroactively applied, however: thus, any children born from such a marriage officiated before said date were ruled as Mischlinge ersten Grades: a first-degree ‘mixed’. The Mischlinge suffered their own persecutions, but they would at least be spared extermination.
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Very interesting that the Nazis didn't enforce ex post facto laws. Speaks to their level of legal morality.
But that exactly is the problem with legal morality, following the law without morality!
But that exactly is the problem with legal morality, following the law without morality!
That is what makes one Nazi.
Equally wrong as to follow moraliry without legality one creates odious order the other create righte9ur chaos
There were no plans for the existence of an independent, or even somewhat autonomous, Poland.
The ‘General Government for the occupied Polish region’ didn’t exist as a prelude to a Polish puppet state- far from it. The reason it was a separate territory, that was not just folded into Germany like the rest of Poland was, was the near-nonexistence of a significant German minority within its borders- for the region’s proper integration into Germany, a period of transition, Germanization and repression was deemed necessary. In essence, it was no different than a Reichskommissariat.
At no point throughout the occupation of Poland did the Germans seriously entertain the thought of any restoration of Polish statehood. It’s not like they didn’t have the opportunity to set up such a structure- they had, and Germany treated those opportunities with utter disregard. Presumably, if the Germans had any interest whatsoever in Polish statehood, they would’ve been somewhat receptive when Wladyslaw Studnicki, noted Polish politician known for his pro-German and anti-Communist stance, kept trying again and again to make such a thing happen, including proposing a recreation of the Polish army to assist in the war with the Soviet Union.
Let alone showing any interest in Studnicki, Germans eventually arrested him. Twice.
The above is the text of the Proclamation of Governor General dated October 1939, announcing the establishment of German authority across all of Poland that was not given to the Soviets.
Generally, when a country is occupied, it is in the interest of the occupiers that the occupied expect lenience and benevolent treatment: thus, the kind of public announcements and claims made by those occupying forces aimed at public consumption tend to be… less than honest. This, certainly, was true of announcements like the above: there’s certainly multiple pretenses at generous behavior there that history would soon show to be lies. The sentence ‘you should be allowed to retain your Polish character’ reads especially like the bald-faced lie that it was, considering the events that happened in the years that followed.
And thus, it’s particularly illuminating to see the phrase ‘des ehemaligen landes Polen’, ‘of the former country of Poland’, in this announcement. If that’s not enough, in the next sentence is also the description ‘a state that was once built on the Versailles truce and will never be reborn’.
Note: this is an announcement made in occupied Poland, its intended audience being Poles, designed to improve cooperation and collaboration with the occupying forces by way of a mix of promises and threats. And even here, Hans Frank states flatly that Poland is to never be a state again.
Presumably, if the Germans weren’t even willing to falsely promise a return of Polish statehood in a publication aimed entirely to making Poles not cause trouble, they had no intent whatsoever to actually permit Poland its independence. Let alone independence, it was highly unlikely for Poles as a nation to be permitted existence.
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What a coincidence, this popped up on my feed just after reading about the Nowa Polska from TNO.
Wait, you play TNO?
Alfredo PerozoOh no, sadly no. Even if now I can actually afford it my computer has the power of a decomissioned toaster and could never get it to run. But well, reading wikis and watching videos about it can be enjoyable too¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Mr arslan, this is out of the topic comment, but, before i read this answer of yours, i read some of your older answers, and your development is pretty astounding, to be honest,a lot of your older answer contain more rethoric and kinda one sided than factual data, but reading your newer answer, i fi
… (more)I’m trying to be less emotional and more straight-lined in my answers these days, as well as more clear and to-the-point. Fiery rhetoric has its place and all, but… it’s not exactly conducive to proper scholarship.
It’d have been better if I had learned that lesson sooner rather than later, but I’ll
… (more)If you treat Polish with lower case, please do the same with German
This answer may contain sensitive images. Click on an image to unblur it.
He’d be hanged.
Ley would likely be acquitted of the first out of the three charges brought against him- the famous ‘conspiracy charge’ proved particularly difficult to make stick at Nuremberg, with eleven defendants who were found guilty of other charges being acquitted of it.
However, Ley’s other two charges, of war crimes and crimes against humanity, would definitely stick. It wasn’t Ley who was the reason behind the existence of countless slave workers that fueled the German war economy, as the provision of labour was the responsibility of Fritz Sauckel. But although Ley wasn’t the person finding these workers, he was the one responsible for their management and treatment- and thus, one of the primary actors guilty of the dismal treatment of the forced laborers in Germany.
Sauckel was hanged for his ready provision of slave labor for the German industries: certainly, Ley wasn’t going to get any more lenient a sentence for being in charge of their dismal treatment, and didn’t deserve one either. Once he was in the Nuremberg prison, the only way he was getting out was through the noose- the only thing that changed was that he managed to become his own hangman.
And if he had abstained from suicide long enough to get his own death sentence, it’d certainly be one he deserved.
Ley, shortly after his capture by American troops in Bavaria. The title of the image, ‘Strength Through Joy’, refers to the German Kraft durch Freude program, a state-run leisure and tourism organization that had been Ley’s responsibility until it ceased to operate after the start of the war.
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It was common- maybe not as common as it is today, but the seeming near-nonexistence of cancer in that list is due to the following:
- Cancer more commonly crops up in older ages than the younger, and the more people die to something else, the fewer grow old enough to get cancer. 14th century had a far shorter life expectancy than today, largely due to a whole host of infectious diseases we can safely treat and prevent today, and every single person who died to those is someone who did not grow old enough to develop cancer.
- An extension of the above, if there’s something that kills a lot of people quickly, it’s probably also going to kill many people who have cancer, before they die of cancer.
- Furthermore, if there’s something that kills a lot of people very quickly, it’s going to reduce every other cause of death to smaller ‘percentages’, even if nothing changes vis-a-vis their prevalence. If nobody in that list had died of plague, the rate of ‘cancer deaths’ among deaths would suddenly become eight times what it is counting plague deaths.
- A lack of adequate diagnosis. Many cancers would be impossible to identify in the 14th century, and others would require thorough autopsy which I doubt was particularly common at the time. There are 309 people who died from fever- some of them may have been, say, suffering from lymphoma, whose most distinctive symptom would be fever. Needless to say, lymphoma started being diagnosed only with the rise of microscopy and histology as a field of medicine in the 19th century. ‘Griping in the guts’ would refer to severe abdominal discomfort- that could be a symptom of countless gastrointestinal system cancers. Five of jaundice? Could be hepatobiliary cancers. Convulsion? Could be caused by metastasis of cancer to the central nervous system. Consumption? Traditionally refers to pulmonary tuberculosis- but some might well be misdiagnosed lung cancer.
However, many cancers indeed would have been less common in the past, as they are associated with risk factors that weren’t present at the time. The single greatest risk factor for lung cancer, for example, is smoking- tobacco smoking spread in England only in the sixteenth century. Past pregnancies are protective against endometrial cancer- likely, endometrial cancer was less common in times where pregnancy rates were higher. Lung mesothelioma is almost exclusive to asbestos exposure- certainly, it would be less common before the mass use of asbestos in the 19th century.
On the other hand, other cancers were more common in the past, as their risk factors were more prevalent in the past. For example, scrotal carcinoma was much more common in 18th century London, when work as chimney sweeps(especially as children) was highly prevalent.
However, cancer is, in no way, a modern disease- it only took this long to properly understand, identify and treat most forms of cancer.
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Not disagreeing with the meat of your answer since you are a specialist in this field, however a minor correction.
.”Cancer more commonly crops up in older ages than the younger, and the more people die to something else, the fewer grow old enough to get cancer. 14th century had a far shorter life ex
… (more)I mean, this is true, but this doesn’t change the end result. It only matters, for the sake of this comparison, that someone dies at too young an age to die of cancer, since even infant deaths are going to be listed in recordings of death. It doesn’t matter if an infectious disease kills someone at
… (more)Ooh, is this a rare connection between Cem the med-student and Cem the history-geek?
In any case, excellent and succinct.
I’ll start by saying this. Holy shit I did not see this coming.
I rarely write or talk on US politics- or politics at all, especially these days compared to a few years ago. Those that saw me write on it, however, probably realize I’ve, vis-a-vis my position on the American political spectrum, had a quite peculiar experience: although possessed of a set of political beliefs fairly distant from both of the mainstream American ideologies, I used to semi-regularly bounce between having sympathy for the Republicans and for the Democrats until finally giving up on it, as I’ve seen the cesspool the whole political arena became, save for a few people on either side who held on to integrity.
From the Democrat and the Republican sides and from many of the sub-factions within those I’ve seen varying degrees of repulsive behaviour, from hatred to hysteria, in degrees that far outnumbered the voices of sanity(the representatives of those voices of sanity on Quora, you know who you are and my respect for you in that regard). In sum, I like to believe my distaste for the American politics is well-founded. Yet, simultaneously, when I’ve heard the typical doom-and-gloom pictures of ruin the factions of American politics paint about the consequences of the opposing side’s triumphs, I have regularly seen gross exaggerations in them. And in seeing such panic as exaggerated, I have always been right.
Until right fucking now.
The iconic image of the Capitol swarmed by a mob, by Leah Millis of the Reuters.
Certainly, I wasn’t going to be surprised at all if Trump’s electoral defeat was met by protest. Even if said protests turned violent, I would have reacted to it with calm- for I would have foreseen it might have occurred. But I did not see this coming.
This isn’t protest. At this point, even ‘violent protest’ is too little. This is sedition.
Sure, it did start as a protest. As long as what this group did was to gather before the Capitol and shout their opposition to the electoral results, they were entirely within their rights to do so- even if their point was nonsensical. But that was not all they did. The moment they breached the Capitol perimeter and proceeded to vandalize the seat of the Congress, the epithet of ‘protest’ goes away.
It’s unacceptable that this even happened. But even more unacceptable is the response. While the flimsy security cordon around the Capitol was being breached, it fell to state governors to deploy elements of their National Guard into DC. DC’s own National Guard? It took one and a half hours for an order summoning it to the Capitol to be signed… by Mike Pence. Not President Trump, who certainly was in the position to do it, and had the duty to do it, but… didn’t. There are few political views in the American mainstream which I would disagree with as much as Pence’s, but even he at least signed the bloody order to send in the Guard!
I was at shock watching the events unfold. Every time, whenever they were tossed out, whether by Republicans or Democrats, I had always seen gross exaggeration and doomsaying in foretellings of futures like this. Every time I was right. Until this happened. I could sit here and claim that I had foreseen such a thing, but I’d be lying. I didn’t.
But I can tell you one thing. This cannot be allowed to stand.
By my personal book, this borders perilously close to high treason. It is not by US law, but I’m pretty sure it is, at the very least, insurrection, and it needs to be treated as such. And it can’t stop with the mob- it shouldn’t. Mobs are easy to control. With the right words, right emotions and right prodding they can be driven to almost everything.
There’s people responsible for those words and prodding. More severely, there’s people responsible for the absolutely lackluster response to this. While state governors mobilized to the Capitol’s defense, the very president to which such mission is entrusted did nothing- no, it would be better had he done nothing. He’s pretty clearly encouraged it. The most charitable interpretation would label Trump with a massive lack of foresight concerning the impact of his own actions and a total lack of will to respond appropriately to the consequences this brought about. And I don’t know about you, but right now I’m not feeling awfully charitable.
There is no room left for partisan loyalties in this issue- such loyalties plagued America for long enough, and in a matter this severe they can no longer be tolerated. It was two state governors that sent their National Guard into DC., one a Republican, one a Democrat. I know nothing about those governors, except that they were willing to do what was necessary in this moment of crisis. Take example. The people responsible for this cannot receive a slap on the wrist and walk out because of partisan loyalties. The tradition in the US of people excusing away loathsome or even criminal activities because it was done by ‘their side’ is certainly not new, and both sides have certainly been guilty of it in the past. But this is a whole new level. Loathsome though that past precedent was and despicable though I found it, the event it’s culminated in surpasses the excesses of the past. It must be stopped here.
It’s a warning call against the consequences of partisan fidelity over loyalty to the nation. A warning call for everyone: for every Republican with integrity it’s a call to clean their own house, God knows it needs cleaning- and although nothing this egregious has come from the other side of the aisle, it’s a warning for the Democrats too, to be vigilant against themselves and learn their lessons from the catastrophic last days of the Trump presidency and the events that led to it. I don’t want to see this repeating fifteen years later with the parties switched.
And here, for the first time, I’m going to make a ‘doom and gloom’ prediction myself: unless this is met with the appropriate response, worse will happen. This is insurrection. It must be treated as insurrection- with requisite severity.
Listen to Lincoln. A house divided against itself cannot stand. That house is once again divided, and stands on a precipice. And if insurrection ends up excused away, if its enablers and participants get ignored or forgotten because of party lines, worse than this assault upon the Capitol will happen. If insurrection goes away excused because of the political identity of the insurrectionists, then the house plummets from the precipice and the US will not like where it ends up.
And trust me on this. If I’m being the doomsayer, that’s a warning sign.
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This.
Criminal investigation, trial and (hopefully) lifelong imprisonment without parole for every seditious insurrectionist.
Criminal investigation, trial and (hopefully) lifelong imprisonment without parole of the Capitol Police who assisted the insurrection.
Lifelong wouldn’t work. Under the Title 18 of the US Code the most you could charge them is twenty years, if you label it seditious conspiracy. Ten if it’s insurrection. I’m not sure if you could combine both and charge thirty- I’m not a legal expert.
Lifelong on a single charge would require high tr
… (more)Thomas SnerdleyGood points Cem! I’m certainly no legal expert. Whatever the maximum is should be their sentence. Hard to believe that people are put away for life for ridiculous drug offenses and people who conspire and act to literally overthrow our representative democracy could walk after 20 years.
Technically, they might be charged with conspiracy to commit murder, which has life imprisonment as a possible punishment. See 18 U.S. Code § 1117 - Conspiracy to murder and 18 U.S. Code § 1114 - Protection of officers and employees of the United States :
“If two or more persons conspire to violate s
… (more)Thomas SnerdleyThanks Ron! I could definitely go for that!
“It’s a warning call against the consequences of partisan fidelity over loyalty to the nation. A warning call for everyone: for every Republican with integrity it’s a call to clean their own house, God knows it needs cleaning- and although nothing this egregious has come from the other side of the a
… (more)Oh again that's right it's just the CONSTITUTION OF AMERICA OUR FOUNDING PAPERS we can IGNORE THEM THEY DON'T FIT TODAY'S TIME.
SO LET ME UNDERSTAND YOUR THOUGHTS
TRASH THE CONSTITUTION ILLEGALLY CHANGING WHAT IT SAYS SO YOU CAN STELL AN ELECTION.
OR MOSTLY PEACEFUL PROTEST WALKING THROUGH THE PEOPLES
… (more)Brian MillerTo quote my dad, “well there’s you’re problem!” I appreciate your passion. How come you believe that the election was stolen? Just for shits and giggles, take a look at the facts for a minute. If the election was stolen there would have to be a conspiracy of thousands if not millions of co-conspirators. From election workers, observers, voting machine manufacturers (which, apparently, must be printing out fraud Biden votes and shredding legal Trump votes? Since there is always an audit-able paper trail), truck drivers apparently, secretaries of state, state legislatures, electors, judges, state supreme court justices, and supreme court justices. I’m sure I’ve missed some important people but this is off the top of my head. All these folks have to be in on the conspiracy. And all to coronate the neo-liberal Biden, without bothering to also steal the Senate? Flip state legislatures? Do you think that’s plausible? In order to enable people to vote safely during a pandemic, the rules were changed around to allow people to more effectively vote by mail and absentee. The people who voted, did so legally. We elect the president based on votes. Not legislative sleight of hand and jiggering and wrangling and lawsuits. What about the people who actually voted for Biden? Aren’t you promoting a theory that would in fact steal their votes and their will and voice in our Democracy? The pandemic had a huge effect on this election cycle. Trump was out there, chucking his covid-soaked mask into crowds at these ill-advised rallies while ignoring hundreds of thousands of casualties. I think that might have rubbed some people the wrong way, despite a natural cynicism for neo-liberal politics. I’ll leave you with this. What if you were just being lied to? Most of the conspiracy theories supporting the “we was robbed” narrative come from a web site that allows anyone anywhere to say anything about anything, and record that story as a “report.” It’s not hard to imagine how easy it would be to generate a mountain of rumors and fake stories. That’s why all the cases were tossed out of court. There’s simply no evidence with any kind of proper chain of custody. The rest of it is literally Alex Jones conspiracy theories, which are just plain lies.
After the foiling of the 20 July plot, every member of the Stauffenberg family, by blood or by marriage, were taken into custody. This was connected to the doctrine of Sippenhaft- originally a custom in pre-Christian Germanic populaces where the family of an offender could be held to account for said offense. As with all things connected to pagan Germans of old, the Sippenhaft was idolized by Himmler- but unlike most of Himmler’s neo-pagan fancies, the practice of retaliation against families of ‘offenders’ to the regime became fact and started to spread rapidly after the 20 July plot.
Oberst Claus Graf von Stauffenberg and his older brother, Berthold(who served as a staff judge in the headquarters of Oberkommando der Marine) were executed as conspirators in the 20 July plot, in which both of them had participated. The rest of the family, including the third brother Alexander Graf von Stauffenberg, were imprisoned at various facilities, ranging from concentration camps to guarded maternity centers(Claus von Stauffenberg’s wife, Magdalena, was pregnant at the time of her arrest). The children not of adult age were placed into orphanages under false names.
To the best of my knowledge, all of the Stauffenberg family save Claus and Berthold survived the war. Four of Claus von Stauffenberg’s five children are still alive, and include a retired Bundeswehr general and a retired Bundestag deputy- one of the five, his daughter Valerie, died in 1966.
In fact, one of Claus von Stauffenberg’s grandsons played a small role as Henning von Tresckow’s aide in the 2008 movie Valkyrie, centered around the very same coup that led to the execution of his grandfather.
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His other brother, Alexander, was unaware of the plot. He was a professor of history and had been wounded twice on the Eastern Front. At the time of the plot he was serving in Athens as an artillery lieutenant. He was rescued from Dachau by the U.S. Army in May 1945 and returned to teaching ancient
… (more)Alexander von Stauffenberg was my professor of Greek history at Munich University from 1960 to 1962. He was a great man and a renowned scholar, and all the students admired him.
Michael WallThank you.
Unbelievable.! Melitta despite having a Jewish ancestry, could serve in Nazi regime…
Thanks for this information, Dear Michael 🙏
Alan RileyMany German Jews served in the Kriegsmarine including, I believe, an Admiral. The Navy actually protected its Jewish members and they were not arrested.
Not all of the Col. Stauffenberg’s children are alive. His older daughter Valerie died of cancer, many years ago. I think she was about 26. [?]
Oh- you’re right. Valerie Grafin von Stauffenberg died in 1966.
I’ll amend the answer.
Dennis WojahnIn a business travel that I made to Frankfurt, one of the people that I was negotiating with turned out to be a Von Stauffenberg niece. I was surprised to discover this and I think that she was surprised that an American would be so knowledgeable about Operation Valkyrie.
I have seen somewhere that the family had to face a lot of hostility within the german population in the immediate after war period because they regarded them as related to treason.
Yvette PauluszI’ve never read about that ~ but it seems very likely. I did read that the German population were shocked by the attempt on Hitler’s life. They were hostile to the actions of the plotters, despite the frightful destruction that the Nazi state had caused.
No, he did not do that.
What Hitler was injected with(he did not inject himself, it was the decision of Theodor Morell, his physician) was a drug called Orchikrin, a cocktail of male hormones mixed with testicular, seminal and prostrate extracts, which presumably can crudely be referred to as ‘bull semen’. It was produced by the Hamburg-based pharmaceutical company, Hamma(in which Hitler’s physician Theodor Morell had a controlling share).
But it had nothing to do with ‘the ladies’: it was administered to combat depression and fatigue.
For a short stint in 1943, a similar drug was used- named Prostakrinum, it was a seminal gland and prostrate extract, also used for depression.
I have no idea what effect it had- if Morell recorded the effects of that treatment, the US analysis of Hitler’s medical records neglected to include it, and I am not aware of the fate of Morell’s original records.
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Morell kept a detailed daily record which survived WW2 and is available. It is unknown whether Hitler was fully informed about any of numerous injections. From 1943–4 cocaine was added to keep him going.
Where are the originals of Morell’s records?
I know they survived WW2- I read the US’ medical assessment of Hitler based on it, but I never saw the originals.
Russell JurneyGood question.
This was really crude testosterone replacement but they injected him with pituitary glands too which would have done all kinds of weird stuff. He did enjoy the potency the testosterone gave him.
The answer is ‘no’, but unlike what another answer here claims, that has nothing to do with the fact that Manstein lost.
The fact that someone lost a war has never, on its own, been an implication of talent, nor did it stop monuments from being built. Nobody ever disputed Napoleon’s legacy as the greatest commander of his time. The fact that Russia pretty conclusively lost the First World War didn’t stop a monument in honor of Alexei Brusilov being put up in Saint Petersburg- and it shouldn’t have, as Brusilov was easily the best general of the Tsar’s armies.
It is today pretty accepted across professional historians that Erich von Manstein was, pound for pound, the best general among all his colleagues, if not of the whole war- if I were asked, of all the Axis or Allied generals of the war, I would name solely Konstantin Rokossovsky as his peer in that regard. This isn’t up for dispute- but if the question is to commemorate and honor him… it can’t be the only fact we look at.
Manstein on the left during supper in the Army Group South headquarters- on the right is Hermann Hoth.
Manstein’s adherence to the National Socialist ideology has long been a matter of debate. On one hand, he had clear and proven alignment with National Socialists on multiple areas, including an ardent anti-communism and a strong anti-Semitism. On the other hand, his strong distaste of Party ideologues and ideological firebands were well documented by many, and it’s debatable how much of his support for the ideology came from personal approval and how much from a cold careerism. He certainly never spoke on the matter after the war, and all he left us was a memoir which, while technically mostly(but not entirely) true, was, even by his own admission, a sanitized portrayal of the war that did not touch any issues that did not directly concern operational and military matters and thus ignored a whole dimension of the war in the East.
But for the purpose of the question here, how ‘Nazi’ Manstein was is also unimportant. Why Manstein did something is of only secondary importance. It’s what he did that matters most.
Manstein certainly wasn’t the worst human being in the collection of German field marshals- people like Hermann Göring or Ferdinand ‘Ungeheuer in Uniform’ Schörner existed in that company. But irrespective of where he stands among his colleagues, just as much as he has earned praise for his brilliant operational conduct, he deserves judgment for his darker actions. His military career may have been brilliant, but it definitely wasn’t clean. Intensive forced labor by Russian prisoners of war, exorbitant requisitions of supplies from local territory, multiple cases of mistreatment of prisoners by his troops, and a lack of any action or protest against either the Kommissarbefehl or the activity of the Einsatzgruppen stain his record.
It is debatable how much success Manstein would have had in any attempt to put a stop to these activities. Certainly, regardless of his importance to the German war effort and the high standing in the Army he enjoyed, he was never going to be able to turn the Crimea or later, the Army Group South operational area into a zone of peace and honourable treatment of everyone. But he had to make the attempt. The honour of not merely a soldier, but of a Prussian field marshal, a rank whose illustrious history dated back to Otto von Sparr, the father of the idea of the German General Staff three centuries ago, demanded that Manstein, at least, try- try to abstain from conducting his war dirtily where he was the instigator, and try to stop others’ actions where he was only the observer.
Maybe he wouldn’t have been able to do much- I don’t know. It is not an easy guess. But even if the only thing those attempts achieved would be to save a single village from Ohlendorf’s Einsatzgruppe D, or a handful of Soviet prisoners from starving to death or dying of typhus somewhere, it would indeed be only a drop in the Lake Ilmen compared to the massive heap of human misery that was the Ostfront, but that drop would’ve been an ocean to the few people it comprised of. To those few people, it would’ve made a difference, and for that alone, a soldier’s honour demanded that Manstein, at the very least, try.
He did not. Why exactly he did not is still unknown to history, and may forever remain so- but the why is only of academic significance. Fact is, he did not make the attempt.
The Last Jew in Vinnitsa- the famous photograph showing the end of one of the many massacres of Vinnitsa’s Jewish population. A story goes that the name of the photograph comes from a note scrawled on its back by its owner- an Einsatzgruppe personnel. When the massacre at Vinnitsa happened, Manstein was on the other side of the front fighting as part of Army Group North; but the very same collection of Einsatzgruppe men and local auxiliaries would go on to keep working in Manstein’s rear area during his tenure commanding the Eleventh Army. Manstein may not have been the man who decided to enact the murders of the Einsatzgruppen- but when they were working in his area of responsibility, he shut his eyes and ears to the bloody trail they left behind.
When Manstein fought tooth and nail in his war crimes trial after the war, or when he wrote Verlorene Siege, he wasn’t just trying to rehabilitate himself: he was trying to restore the honour of the Wehrmacht, which had, by and large, come to attach itself to the personal reputation of the man who was its greatest general. Mayhaps that was an understandable sentiment on his behalf. But if Manstein had been as concerned with keeping the honour of the Army during the war as he was concerned with restoring it after the end, he might have made a difference- and even if it was a difference too miniscule to matter in the grand scope of the catastrophic Second World War, it would matter to those affected by it.
Above all, the reason there isn’t a memorial in Manstein’s honour and shouldn’t be one isn’t because Manstein lost. It isn’t because he fought for Hitler- Claus Graf von Stauffenberg had an illustrious career in the Wehrmacht for years, and despite that his name today adorns a plate in the Bendlerblock, along with four others, under the words ‘Here died for Germany’, and I’d argue he deserves even more.
The reason is that Manstein, when faced with actions and orders he had to know were unacceptable, did nothing. When military necessity or ideological insistence called for him to take brutal measures, he did not try to seek an alternative, nor did conscience stop him. When he knew of monstrous acts to some degree or the other, he did not try to stop them. Regardless of how successful he would be in doing so, if he had just made the attempt, he may have saved lives- concrete, real lives, from the nightmare of the Eastern Front. Even if they were not successful at all, it would be arguable that he had, at least, tried.
But Manstein, the man famous for his iron will and his neverending arguments with Hitler whenever the two disagreed on the operational strategy, the man who never once bent or broke before Hitler’s torrential verbal onslaughts, did not find in himself the decision to make the attempt. Regardless of his motivations and stances that led to this being the case, Manstein personified not merely the rightly acknowledged operational excellence of the Wehrmacht for which he is most famous today, but also its damning moral failings- the two sides of the same coin, and you cannot erect a monument to one without the other.
And it is that fact that makes the answer to this question ‘no’.
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In Sofia there is a monument of Aleko Konstantinov, an author and a politician who fought against corruption and got assassinated for his effors, sitting at a table with his character Bay Ganyo.
Now Bay Ganyo Balkanski is everything Konstantinov wasn’t - a self made man to his author’s blue blood, cr
… (more)Walther Wenk deserves a statue though. He was the guy who evacuated civilians from Berlin in the last days of the war, right?
Yes- it was him.
I don’t think there were any allegations of misconduct against Wenck either. And he didn’t just ‘save civilians’ in the sense of ‘keep the Red Army away from them’: come April shortly before the battle for Berlin, his army was feeding some 300.000 civilians stuck in his rear area eve
… (more)Niko NištaDoes he have a statue? I’d say he deserves it.
There was one extremely specific case where being Christian could save a Jew in the Third Reich.
If you were ‘only’ half-Jewish, re: had only two out of four grandparents who were enrolled in a Jewish congregation, whether you were considered a Jew or a Mischling(mix-blood) was determined by whether you met one of the four criteria. Since ‘converted to Christianity’ implies adulthood, two of those were automatically not met- that being being born from a marriage with a Jew concluded after the ban on the mixed marriages, or being born out of wedlock out of an affair involving a Jew after 31 July 1936.
The other two criteria were being married to a Jew, regardless of the date of the marriage, or having been enrolled to a Jewish congregation at the time of the Nuremberg Laws, or joining one later.
If you met any of the four criteria, you would be classified a Geltungsjude- ‘legally Jewish’. If you didn’t, you’d be Mischling ersten Grades- first-degree mixblood.
So, if you didn’t meet any of the other three criteria, and converted to Christianity before the Nuremberg Laws passed in September 1935, regardless of your appearance, that would qualify you as a Mischling.
Now. Make no mistake- being a Mischling of the first degree wasn’t a good life in the Reich. You could pretty much only marry to other Mischlinge or Jews, and if you did the latter you would be classified as a Jew as well. Most higher education and many prestigious jobs were closed to you. Unlike second-grade Mischlinge, you’d even be discharged from the military in 1940. You’d be subject to much discrimination, in short.
But you’d still be a German citizen, and much better off than you would be if you were classified Geltungsjude. Those of that classification that hadn’t managed to flee the country when immigration sealed in 1941 were, pretty much all, murdered.
An alternative, of course, to survival was having a friend high enough in the state who could look out for you- secure a few exceptions. That, of course, had little to do with how you looked or what you converted to.
In all other circumstances other than the specific case up above, neither Christianity nor appearance would help you. The Nazi racial hierarchy was often porous and many ‘subhuman’ populations were seen as good candidates for Germanization, but the Jews weren’t among those. If you were legally classified as a Jew under the Nuremberg Laws, how you looked or what holy book you believed in did not matter. Those people died- even the most Aryan-looking of them, even the most Christian of them, even the ones of them who had no idea of their own ancestry. Even the most loyal and the most true to Germany were killed.
It’s worth noting that all the fine classification concerning the different treatment of half-Jews were only applied in Germany and Western Europe. In the East, just being half or a quarter Jewish didn’t earn the Mischling status to anyone when the rest was Slavic ancestry. Like the Jews of Germany, they too perished.
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My father-in-law, who had been the youngest soloist to every sing at the Kroll Opera in Berlin, had a Jewish grandfather. That was enough to make it illegal for any state-supported institution to hire him as a singer. He got by up till the war by singing at weddings and funerals.
When the war came,
Were the discharged Mschlings recalled later?
I would imagine that there would be a point when the Wehrmacht would be willing to overlook some imperfections in otherwise conscript able person.
No, they weren’t. Persecuting Jews was more important to the Nazi hierarchy than winning the war.
Consideration was given in 1943 to recalling the dismissed Mischlinge, but in the end it was decided instead to form them into forced labour battalions as part of the Operation Todt, to work on building
… (more)I’ve been aware that this question existed for well over a year. For that over a year, I have been thinking whether to answer it. Frankly, I maybe did not have the will and verve to answer it: for I know that what I’m about to write will not make me many friends, among either side of this hotly contested topic.
I’ve written a few things on the topic in the past- mostly in my earliest years on the site. Most of those things are, now, deleted- some because they were badly written, some because they were wrong, some because I just did not like how I made the point I was making. But this question still stands, and is unanswered by who it’s adressed to. Thus, I finally decided to answer it, partly because it needed to be answered- but warning. Whatever you expect me to write on this topic… you’ll probably find the following answer a massive anticlimax, but I can assure you, it’s my sincere opinion.
And I’ll start by going straight to the reason why I stopped writing on the topic years ago, and why most people will be disappointed by this answer. I don’t know enough.
As many people who will read this answer are probably aware of, I live in Turkey- yet, I generally pride myself on trying to reach as broad an array of sources as I have the power to. Thus, I’m disposed in such a way that I’ve had plenty of exposure to a lot of prevailing points of view on this topic, including the two chief theses which I’ll henceforth refer to as the Turkish and the Armenian stances, although both are and have been defended by a diverse array of scholars that do not exclusively belong to those nationalities.
Many people who will read this answer are also aware of that the events that the Armenian stance would name genocide and the Turkish side merely deportations or massacres are not within my area of historical expertise- another reason why I wrote so little on it so far. Furthermore, as I admitted before, my ‘historical expertise’ is purely a hobby and founded upon the roots of lots of individual reading, and that I have had no formal education on the subject beyond high school level. And a formal education of history, done properly, as with any field of higher education, imparts not merely pure knowledge, but a certain skillset- for which hobbyistic self-learning naturally does not substitute.
I’m writing the above to stress the fact that I have confessed to at the start: my exposure to quality scholarship in this topic is not enough to pierce through the mist and smoke of 1915. I did not read and study this topic in sufficient depth. I do not know enough. I lack the combination of sufficient reading on the topic and the professional historian’s skillset to have a conclusive, accurate picture of what happened.
The old fire in me is burned out. I do not regret the fact that it did- that fire has harmed me more than it did good, for along with a fighting spirit it brought great arrogance. But its fighting, seeking spirit would serve me well here, and here I do miss it. I’d learn this question’s topic, and I’d be here able to tell you a conclusive answer on the facts of the matter as well as my opinion on them. Then the people who want to see a satisfactory answer to this question would have one.
But I can’t. Because I do not have the opportunity or skillset to make my own scholarly research on the topic and I do not have the will and verve to, in my already extremely busy life, do the intensive reading that will be necessary. I’m not a historian by trade, and my time and energy is limited.
Regardless of what I’d end up finding, it’d end up involving a fundamental chapter of my country’s history that would be worth having read on, but I lack the means to ‘dig deeper’, so to speak. And I like to think I’m one of those people, who looked into this topic just well enough to realize there’s more that I need to know.
This is not necessarily a permanent case- but it was the case when I first saw this question, and it is the case now. And I’m not ashamed to admit that I do not know something. Where two entire nations regard this topic as questions of national importance, I will not do the error of commenting without the research to know what I’m saying is right. This isn’t some idle historical trivia. I will not have it on my conscience to write arguments and claims on this severe a topic without knowing I am one hundred percent right.
I realize this feels like an anticlimax, a letdown, to whoever came here expecting a historical review or in depth commentary. But the most I can give you is to say that I do not know enough, tell you why and how that’s the case, and decline to make statements that will inevitably, merely be educated guesses. I do not do this out of lethargy or a lack of care, but simple knowledge, or lack of.
As said, I no longer have that fire that I used to have. The great clash over the nature of the events grow tiring to me. The scholarship concerning the fate of the Ottoman Armenians have been dug into by many scholars, Turkish, Armenian, and from other countries. Many of them were and are extremely respected in their fields.
I’m not a historian by trade- I’ll leave it to those who are to argue the debate. Presumably, at some point in the future, my means and time will permit me greater and more incisive study on the topic. Until then, however, I will not talk on it further.
That’s actually understandable and much better than you outright denying the genocide as some Turkish writers are prone to do. Not commenting on stuff that you don’t know is a good habit that many on the Internet need to adopt.
You won’t see me commenting on the Israel-Palestine conflict because it’s
… (more)I’ve indeed had experience with this in the past- I’ve written or said enough on this and other topics without the requisite expertise in the past. It wasn’t always wrong, but sometimes it was, and ‘sometimes’ is enough.
I’ve quit writing on topics on which I do not have the requisite scholarly exper
… (more)Andrew WeillI’ve had occasion before to comment on your courage in self-examination and commend you for it, and I see you are sticking to it. Well done, and Happy New Year!
Yeah, the Israel-Palestine conflict is one I tend to be reticent to comment on too much because there always seems to be more to learn about it. My perspective is pretty much the same the more I learn, namely that both Israel and Palestine are legitimate states run by historically oppressed people b
… (more)Lee JacobsonAfter saying that you are reticent to comment because your understanding is incomplete, you don’t mind to make quite a biased and controversial statement. This is exactly what Cem is trying to avoid.
I also am not in a position to form an opinion other than to parrot what ‘experts’ say. But after reading the remarkable breadth and depth of your body of work here on Quora, and the fact that you are Turkish, this does feel like a bit of a ‘cop out’. I appreciate that, as someone living in Turkey,
… (more)I understand, entirely, how it comes across. Indeed, this was one of the reasons why I stated at the start that this would be the kind of answer that will not make me many friends: I was concerned it would be regarded as a cheap cop-out.
Honestly, I hate writing this kind of answer. I fundamentally b
… (more)Lee JacobsonThank you for your straightforward reply. One of the downsides of being seen as such a laudable writer is that you are expected to have almost a superhuman scope from which you can draw, which is obviously impossible. If I were Turkish, I would hope that I would say, “this is just too much of a contentious issue, and, I’m sincerely sorry, but even if I had a clear opinion on this subject (which I actually don’t), I would not share it. Thank you for your understanding.”
Note: This answer was written under the assumption that the question is asking after a comparison of the Americans’ hatred towards the Japanese and the Nazis’ hatred towards anyone.
It’s possible that the question actually intends to ask about the Americans’ hatred of the Japanese compared to their hatred of the Nazis. In which case, the answer below obviously does not apply.
First things first- anyone who’s read what I wrote[1] last time I talked on the topic of the American treatment of US citizens of Japanese origin will know that I do not have a favorable opinion on that treatment.
That treatment had extremely little to do with the question of ‘wartime security measures’, as was peddled out to everyone. It did not merely include acts that, from a question of national security, might have been justified- it included a long story of mistreatment rooted in racism and contempt, that lasted not only during but after the war. Thousands of Japanese-Americans fought for their country with the utmost valour, formed the most decorated regiment in the history of the United States, and they received nothing in return but scorn. And when they returned home, they found their relatives incarcerated in internment camps, their homes vandalized, shops denying them service, and veterans’ organizations barring them entry.
In that answer, I had stated the following:
Yet when the country they had accepted as their homeland was in its hour of need, those men stood up. When their adopted country let them down, when it abused and denigrated them, they still stood up when the United States needed them. They went out there, not just as conscripts but as volunteers. They rose above and beyond the call of duty, and gave their country a loyalty and a tenacity it did not earn and certainly did not deserve.
I’m saying this, just to make it clear that what I’m about to say isn’t understood as trying to downplay the revolting treatment of the Japanese Americans.
Artist’s depiction of the 442nd Infantry Regiment, made up overwhelmingly of Japanese Americans, on the attack in the Vosges front, 1944 October. In nine days of fierce fighting trying to break through to another encircled American battalion, the regiment lost more than half of its personnel: a possibly apocryphal story goes that during a ceremony in their honor afterwards, the few hundred men of the regiment still in a state to attend had turned up and were asked why the rest of the regiment hadn’t arrived.
In terms of morality, I believe in two things. One, evil is evil. Evil is evil, and ‘but someone else was worse’ isn’t an excuse. Two, there absolutely is such a thing as the lesser evil, and the ‘lesser’ matters.
There is no adjective milder than ‘disgraceful’ for the American treatment of their citizens of Japanese origin. But despicable though it was, I’d still absolutely prefer to be a Japanese-American in the early forties than a German Jew.
In fact, the German Jews form an excellent analogy here- because just as the Japanese Americans proved themselves to be, the German Jews were an extremely loyal population: arguably the most well-integrated and loyal Jewish minority in Europe. Reichsbund jüdischer Frontsoldaten, the largest veterans’ organization for German Jews, was advocating total and sincere loyalty to Germany right up until the day it was banned in 1938. Just like the Japanese Americans, the Jews of Germany had held to their fidelity through all the adversity and hatred.
But the difference is, Germany didn’t stop with 1938. In the US, the the fidelity of Japanese Americans was paid back with contempt, discrimination and hatred- in Germany, it may have started with that, but it ended with death.
Yes, it wasn’t the first choice of the National Socialists: if Hitler could, he’d be happy just tossing all the Jews in Germany and Czechoslovakia and Poland and everywhere else to somewhere, anywhere, off the European continent. But he couldn’t, and the National Socialist leadership didn’t go ‘well, we can’t send them away, guess we’ll have to tolerate them’- they went ‘well, we can’t send them away… then we have to kill them!’
Despite everything, the US didn’t look for somewhere half the world away to dump 120.000 Japanese Americans into, and decide to murder them all when they couldn’t find any such place. I’m quite sure that the German Jews(as well as the Jews of a lot of other countries and the members of a lot more ethnocultural groups) would be a lot more content, not to mention a lot more alive, if the National Socialists stopped at internment camps.
‘Lesser evil’ is a term so many struggle with- so many people choose to take one of those words and ignore the other. They either fixate on ‘lesser’ and whitewash it with tales of worse, or on ‘evil’ and try to equate it on worse acts.
Neither is a good way to look at it. Compared to National Socialists’ treatment of populations they hated, the American treatment of Japanese was the lesser evil. On one hand, it was lesser. On the other hand, it was evil.
Forgetting either of those halves is a bad idea, I’d say. One could argue that the Americans hated the Japanese more than the National Socialists hated Jews… and one would be wrong.
Footnotes
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I am not sure of how to interpret the question: is “nazi hatred” the atred bBY nazis (as in your answer), or the hared of Americans VERSUS the nazis? I had originally interpreted the question as the latter…
That could entirely be the case, actually.
I’ll put up an edit at the top.
I wouldn’t say that the Nazis merely turned to murdering the Jews as they realized they couldn’t expel them. In 1941 they shifted to a position where the Jews had to be exterminated as a reaction to the fortunes of war turning against them; the Jews had to be massacred so that the war could be won.
… (more)besides Europe was importer of food. Nazi extermination policy wasn’t just based on hatred but also some perceived practicality. Jews decided to be first to go because of hatred though. If America was under threat of starvation what would have happened we can’t know obviously. WWII was a hunger war
… (more)Noah WienerWell if we’re talking about food then Nazi atrocities against the Slavs are more to the point- I don’t know that food had anything to do with the Holocaust, but the Nazis certainly planned to allow thirty million Ukrainians to starve to death in order to turn the Ukraine into the breadbasket of the Reich.
The hardest thing for a triumphant army exploiting its victories, yet one of the most relevant: knowing when to stop.
Amateur military historian and fiction writer
The problem with supply is that it’s not a binary situation, where you either have supply or not have supply.
An axiom of modern warfare is that a major advance always weakens the supply lines. The advance means more distance from the supply sources to the front, the intense combat means more supply expenditure that has to be replaced, and supply lines now cross through newly captured territory where the infrastructure is, beyond doubt, damaged by either combat or deliberate enemy demolition.
As a successful offensive unfolds, the amount of supplies available to forward units grows less and less- but this contrasts with the success of the offensive, which opens up more and more avenues for triumph. It’s this point where the decision is on a knife’s edge. Recognizing the exact moment where the supply situation ceases to permit the exploitation of extant opportunities. In essence, knowing when to stop. And when you’re winning, that’s incredibly difficult.
German armor advancing through Kalinin, October 1941. When Germans took Kalinin, it marked an advance of around a thousand kilometers in just under four months. Naturally, the supply situation stretched worse and worse.
This wasn’t unique to the Germans- or, for that matter, the Eastern Front. This degree of rapid, mechanized war being a brand new way of warfare, many commanders and campaigns had trouble with knowing when to stop. Rommel’s campaign in Africa was repeatedly characterized with pushing far ahead of his supply lines’ capability, again and again, which led to the decisive German defeat in North Africa. In the West, the haste of the Allied pursuit across France almost led to disaster as the logistics pretty much completely broke down by the time Allies broke into the Low Countries and reached the Hürtgenwald. It was, in fact, a pretty comparable analogue to the German offensive into Russia, which by October had begun to smell final triumph. Although the Germans were aware of the logistical situation growing increasingly thin, the promise of victory and the seeming weakness of the Red Army won out.
The difference was that when the Allied troops in the West came to a halt in 1944, in need of all manner of supply, three years of blow after blow had left the German army in a state in which they could not exploit this weakness. In the East, however, in the last months of 1941, the Soviet Union had more fight in her than Germans gave her credit for, and they absolutely could and did punish the overextension of the Wehrmacht.
Indeed, the Soviets were not immune to this kind of behavior. Just over one year after the failure of Barbarossa, the Soviets would commit a similar mistake: smelling blood on the water after the collapse of the German southern front after Stalingrad, Soviet forces pushed deep into the German flank, beyond their logistical ability to do so, and the overextended tip of the Soviet spear was broken at Kharkov by a German counter-offensive.
What allowed the Soviets to, logistically speaking, go the long path from the gates of Moscow to the banks of the Elbe wasn’t just a very robust logistical train, which they did have. What allowed them was that they learned, and learned very well.
The summer of 1944 saw the Red Army inflict upon the German military the most grave defeat it suffered in its entire history. Operation Bagration effectively annihilated three field armies and inflicted four hundred thousand casualties- most of which were dead, missing or captured, and thus irrecoverable. Twenty-eight divisions were annihilated, including some of the best troops in the Wehrmacht. Nine division or corps commanders were killed, twenty-two were taken prisoner, one went missing and two shot themselves.
And yet, despite the totality of the triumph, when the advancing Soviet forces came to a halt on the banks of the Vistula, despite the fact that the thin, crusting line of German defence awaiting them did not even compare to the formidable line of fortifications that were smashed at the start of the operation, it was a display that the Red Army had learned when to stop.
And that is perhaps the most vital thing when it comes to modern, mechanized warfare. A major advance, in essence, is a situation where victories and territorial gain is paid for by supplies and cohesion and troop restfulness, where every new advance need be weighed against the overextension it requires.
In certain places, every combatant of the Second World War fell prey to the same error- of going a little too far. Sometimes, as for the Germans at the gates of Moscow or Soviets at Kharkov, this had severe consequences. Sometimes, as with the Allies racing for the Rhine, it did not.
But as the initiative decisively shifted to them, and they began on their long and bloody advance towards Berlin, the Red Army had learned when to stop- and that learning carried them to the banks of the Elbe and to triumph.
East meets West: photograph shot in honor of the Elbe Day, on the left American Second Lieutenant William Robertson of the 69th Infantry Division, on the right Lieutenant Alexander Sylvashko, 58th Guards Rifle Division. The photo may have been staged, but Robertson and Sylvashko were not picked at random: they were in fact leading what might have been the first groups of American and Soviet personnel to meet on the Elbe- they even accidentally shot at each other for a brief moment thinking the others were German soldiers.
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The problem with supply is that it’s not a binary situation, where you either have supply or not have supply.
An axiom of modern warfare is that a major advance always weakens the supply lines. The advance means more distance from the supply sources to the front, the intense combat means more supply expenditure that has to be replaced, and supply lines now cross through newly captured territory where the infrastructure is, beyond doubt, damaged by either combat or deliberate enemy demolition.
As a successful offensive unfolds, the amount of supplies available to forward units grows less and less- but this contrasts with the success of the offensive, which opens up more and more avenues for triumph. It’s this point where the decision is on a knife’s edge. Recognizing the exact moment where the supply situation ceases to permit the exploitation of extant opportunities. In essence, knowing when to stop. And when you’re winning, that’s incredibly difficult.
German armor advancing through Kalinin, October 1941. When Germans took Kalinin, it marked an advance of around a thousand kilometers in just under four months. Naturally, the supply situation stretched worse and worse.
This wasn’t unique to the Germans- or, for that matter, the Eastern Front. This degree of rapid, mechanized war being a brand new way of warfare, many commanders and campaigns had trouble with knowing when to stop. Rommel’s campaign in Africa was repeatedly characterized with pushing far ahead of his supply lines’ capability, again and again, which led to the decisive German defeat in North Africa. In the West, the haste of the Allied pursuit across France almost led to disaster as the logistics pretty much completely broke down by the time Allies broke into the Low Countries and reached the Hürtgenwald. It was, in fact, a pretty comparable analogue to the German offensive into Russia, which by October had begun to smell final triumph. Although the Germans were aware of the logistical situation growing increasingly thin, the promise of victory and the seeming weakness of the Red Army won out.
The difference was that when the Allied troops in the West came to a halt in 1944, in need of all manner of supply, three years of blow after blow had left the German army in a state in which they could not exploit this weakness. In the East, however, in the last months of 1941, the Soviet Union had more fight in her than Germans gave her credit for, and they absolutely could and did punish the overextension of the Wehrmacht.
Indeed, the Soviets were not immune to this kind of behavior. Just over one year after the failure of Barbarossa, the Soviets would commit a similar mistake: smelling blood on the water after the collapse of the German southern front after Stalingrad, Soviet forces pushed deep into the German flank, beyond their logistical ability to do so, and the overextended tip of the Soviet spear was broken at Kharkov by a German counter-offensive.
What allowed the Soviets to, logistically speaking, go the long path from the gates of Moscow to the banks of the Elbe wasn’t just a very robust logistical train, which they did have. What allowed them was that they learned, and learned very well.
The summer of 1944 saw the Red Army inflict upon the German military the most grave defeat it suffered in its entire history. Operation Bagration effectively annihilated three field armies and inflicted four hundred thousand casualties- most of which were dead, missing or captured, and thus irrecoverable. Twenty-eight divisions were annihilated, including some of the best troops in the Wehrmacht. Nine division or corps commanders were killed, twenty-two were taken prisoner, one went missing and two shot themselves.
And yet, despite the totality of the triumph, when the advancing Soviet forces came to a halt on the banks of the Vistula, despite the fact that the thin, crusting line of German defence awaiting them did not even compare to the formidable line of fortifications that were smashed at the start of the operation, it was a display that the Red Army had learned when to stop.
And that is perhaps the most vital thing when it comes to modern, mechanized warfare. A major advance, in essence, is a situation where victories and territorial gain is paid for by supplies and cohesion and troop restfulness, where every new advance need be weighed against the overextension it requires.
In certain places, every combatant of the Second World War fell prey to the same error- of going a little too far. Sometimes, as for the Germans at the gates of Moscow or Soviets at Kharkov, this had severe consequences. Sometimes, as with the Allies racing for the Rhine, it did not.
But as the initiative decisively shifted to them, and they began on their long and bloody advance towards Berlin, the Red Army had learned when to stop- and that learning carried them to the banks of the Elbe and to triumph.
East meets West: photograph shot in honor of the Elbe Day, on the left American Second Lieutenant William Robertson of the 69th Infantry Division, on the right Lieutenant Alexander Sylvashko, 58th Guards Rifle Division. The photo may have been staged, but Robertson and Sylvashko were not picked at random: they were in fact leading what might have been the first groups of American and Soviet personnel to meet on the Elbe- they even accidentally shot at each other for a brief moment thinking the others were German soldiers.
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And I think the fact that Soviets were taking back most of their territories as compared to the Germans who were taking unfriendly territory also matters. Soviets would have support of the local population which would enable them to replenish easily as compared to the Germans who would have to const
… (more)most of the locals anyway.
they would not quite have the support of locals in Baltic region until 1950s.
The autumn rasputitsa stopped the Soviet armies on the Vistula not their logistic tail.
Your points on logistics are well made and the logistics were brought into top order in the months that were forced upon them by none military factors.
The Nuremberg Trials were a textbook example of reaching the right outcome with the wrong methods.
The best description of the Nuremberg Trials were probably made by none other than the Chief Justice of the US Supreme Court at the time; Harlan Fiske Stone, who wrote:
Jackson is away conducting his high-grade lynching party in Nuremberg. I don't mind what he does to the Nazis, but I hate to see the pretense that he is running a court and proceeding according to common law. This is a little too sanctimonious a fraud to meet my old-fashioned ideas.
On one hand, the Nuremberg Trials barely had a legal leg to stand upon. Ranging from frivolous rules of evidence, ex post facto application of the law, keeping of documents from the defendants, and a whole litany of other issues, by all reasonable definition, the Trials were effectively a kangaroo court.
On the other hand, most of the people who were tried at that court, both in the main and associated trials, were guilty of entirely legitimate charges nevertheless, and in a proper, ‘fair’ court of international law they would still have received the same, if not harsher, sentences. Hans Frank was always going to get a hanging. Rosenberg, Sauckel, Kaltenbrunner, Göring, Seyss-Inquart… They were always going to die. Of every death sentence in the main Nuremberg Trials, the only one that almost certainly wouldn’t happen under a more legally proper court was Julius Streicher, who strictly speaking wasn’t legally guilty, but Streicher was such a loathsome excuse of a human being that I can only say ‘good riddance’.
And the above is why the sheer legal impropriety of the Trials is so infuriating. Because there was little need for it. The men who were criminals and were held before it could just as easily be sentenced with a more fair trial, one that would have left far less ground for criticism and accusations of Siegerjustiz. Had the sheer legal travesty at Nuremberg been the only way of making sure people like Hans Frank swung from the rope, it’d have been an acceptable solution.
But it wasn’t the only way. The Trials could be ‘legal’ and even-handed in ways they never were, and Frank and Kaltenbrunner and Sauckel and the others would still hang. It is that failure that brands the Nuremberg Trials- an inability to recognize not merely that their flaunting with international and common law was unnecessary, but also that it would be harmful in the pages of history as the legal travesty of the Trials would become the food for arguments defending pieces of shit like Frank, on whose hands were blood of millions of Polish citizens.
The proceedings of the Nuremberg Trials weren’t fair. But the outcome, save a handful of rare exceptions, definitely was fair. Saying that the Trials themselves were a legal farce doesn’t change the fact that the men sentenced in that farce, save a handful of exceptions, deserved their sentences: those two are not conflicting positions to hold.
History will show the trials to be necessary.
Statement by Albert Speer in an interview given to Leon Goldensohn. It is true Speer likely made the statement only to save his own arse with his image of ‘the good Nazi’, but that doesn’t mean he was wrong.
Edit and Addendum: I was asked in the comments what charges could be brought against the Nuremberg defendants without reliance on ex post facto laws and rulings. Someone suggested that my reply to that question would be an useful addition to the answer itself- therefore, I will copy the relevant part of the comment below.
Martin Bormann: Multiple decrees on treatment on Jewish and Slavic population of the East, including 1941 Edict on Criminal Law Practices against Poles and Jews in the Incorporated Eastern Territories, violating multiple articles of the Section III of the Fourth Hague Convention, 1907.
Hans Frank: As above, violation of nearly every article of the Section III of the Fourth Hague Convention during his tenure as General Governor of occupied Poland.
Wilhelm Frick: As above, violation of nearly every article of the Section III of the Fourth Hague Convention during his tenure as Reichsprotektor of Bohemia-Moravia. It wouldn’t be possible to punish him under international law for his pre-war work in Germany, but the above charge alone well merits a death sentence.
Walther Funk: As above, multiple violations of Section III of the Fourth Hague Convention in his role in economic exploitation of the Holocaust and the Eastern Territories. Enough to match the life sentence he got in Nuremberg.
Hermann Göring: Multiple violations of the Fourth Hague Convention with regards to treatment of occupied territories as well as prisoners of war, as well as the 1929 Geneva Convention concerning treatment of prisoners of war.
Alfred Jodl: Several orders that were in violation of the Sections I and III of the Fourth Hague Convention as well as the 1929 Geneva Convention.
Ernst Kaltenbrunner: Open and shut. Blatant violation of a whole array of articles concerning treatment of population in occupied territories.
Wilhelm Keitel: As Jodl.
Konstantin von Neurath: Not enough violations of the Fourth Hague Convention for an execution but enough for the kind of prison sentence he got at Nuremberg.
Joachim von Ribbentrop: Multiple charges on mistreatment of prisoners of war and a few cases of mistreatment of occupied territories. This may be a bit iffy- there may not be enough for a death sentence, but still, a long prison sentence is feasible.
Alfred Rosenberg: Participation in mistreatment of occupied territories per the Fourth Hague Convention.
Fritz Sauckel: Again, extremely open and shut. Sauckel was the one who provided labour to German industry- slave labour, as the war progressed. A whole litany of violations of the Hague and 1929 Geneva Conventions, and a quick trip to the rope.
Baldur von Schirach: Schirach is one of those who might have been able to slip, if not for the fact that the Allies declared the Anschluss null and void, which meant they could treat Austria as occupied territory and pin multiple violations of the Fourth Hague Convention on him.
Arthur Seyss-Inquart: Bunch of violations of the Hague and 1929 Geneva Conventions in Netherlands.
Albert Speer: Multiple counts concerning mistreatment of occupied territory civilians and prisoners of war in their use of slave labour. In fact, if the court was less occupied with going after people because they were Nazis and more occupied with going after them because they were criminals, Speer’s ‘Good Nazi’ act would probably not have affected anyone and he’d swing from the rope.
There’s four people sentenced with something at Nuremberg who might have walked free in a trial that was legally fair: Dönitz, Raeder, Hess and Streicher. Dönitz and Raeder were, legally speaking, innocent(to the best of my knowledge, although I may well be missing a few valid charges), although the moral side is another matter- Dönitz for example could certainly be morally condemned for knowing of unsavory activities and not condemning them.
As of Hess and Streicher, both of them are ‘innocent’ only in the strictest legal sense. Hess was ‘innocent’ not because he had the moral temperament to be innocent(it’s difficult to expect him to differ from, say, Bormann) but because he was in prison for pretty much all of the war and not in position to do anything. Streicher was ‘innocent’ because it’s not a crime to spout copious quantities of anti-Semitic nonsense- it’s just incredibly loathsome.
Nevertheless, I would not complain if the Trials took a step off the strictly legal direction I’m advocating and sent Hess to prison and Streicher to the rope in a blatant display of Siegerjustiz. It may have been done on an absolutely nonexistent legal ground, but when the rope that was around Streicher’s neck snapped taut, the world became a better place. Or, if we’re not trying to ruin the reputation of strict adherence to law that I’m advocating the Trials should have held to, someone should’ve arranged for Streicher to go the way of Dirlewanger* while nobody was looking.
*Just so nobody who reads this has to go Google it, Oskar Dirlewanger was beaten to death in an Allied prisoner of war camp by several of the guards, who were Polish, after someone recognized him. It’s difficult to condone a prisoner of war’s murder, but if anyone ever deserved it it was Dirlewanger.
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Can you explain how the courts could have done without ex post facto law? It seems to me that the existence of the court at all could only be based on ex post facto law, since there were never such tribunals before, and never such “laws” either.
I will review sentences of the main Nuremberg Trials and quickly name a non-exhaustive list of actions that could be used to impose formidable sentences on them:
Martin Bormann: Multiple decrees on treatment on Jewish and Slavic population of the East, including 1941 Edict on Criminal Law Practices a
… (more)Tim WardNo joke re: Dirlewanger. He was the most depraved of all prominent Nazis and that’s saying a *lot*.
Could you roll this comment into your answer, Cem? Both are fantastic.
Could you roll this comment into your answer, Cem? Both are fantastic.
“Crimes Against Humanity” and “Crimes Against Peace” were new legal concepts, but there was already a canon of applicable law concerning “War Crimes”; established by the Hague Conventions and the Geneva Conventions.
Slaughtering civilians may not have been a war crime at the time (didn’t come in expl
… (more)Dirlewanger: Aka imagine being so morally horrifying that even the SS were disgusted of you
Not to mention that he was a pedo. Wtf.
Robert JonesApparently the term “pedo” is lobbed at anyone that doesn’t toe the historical politically correct narrative. I’ve been called that too for simply being a Trump supporter.
If you’re looking for Eastern Front information with a Soviet outlook, David Glantz will serve you well.
Glantz was one of the first historians in the West who wrote on the Eastern Front with a major contribution of the Soviet source material, which, to be fair to other historians, wasn’t entirely accessible to the West for decades. More importantly, for the most part, he did so with a decidedly neutral attitude. Given that his books are written more concerning the Soviet side than the German one(though the latter also is written about often), he’s not immune to occasional episode of bias- but when he does, those tend to be mild, rare, and in all honesty, there’s no such thing as a work of history with no bias. Overall, Glantz has been among the more neutral of World War Two historians that I’ve read.
In the end, Glantz is regarded as one of the best historians on the Red Army in the Second World War, for a very good reason. He’s written a lot of books on the topic, too, so you aren’t exactly short on material.
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Ever since hearing of Glantz through the father of a guy in my high school (decades ago), I’m glad I did — his overview of the Battle of Kursk is still one of the best I’ve ever read, and I enjoyed reading his books about the so-called “forgotten battles” of the Red Army in WW2 (Operation Mars, fail
… (more)Thanks for the suggestion. Just ordered “When Titans Clashed: How the Red Army Stopped Hitler” , and added several others to my Amazon book list.
When Titans Clashed is probably the best ‘overview’ book of the Eastern Front ever written.
Admittedly, it’s among Glantz’s earliest works on the Eastern Front and has had a few issues far less prevalent in his later works. But despite its failings it’s still an extremely good overview of the war in
… (more)Rob WilsonI got it yesterday via Amazon and began devouring it last night before bed. This is pretty much exactly what I was looking for. Thanks again! Next up after this I ordered his book on Soviet military deception. While that book was friggin expensive (40 bucks for a used paperback), I pulled the trigger anyway. The topic interests me because history often treats Germany’s defeat by the Red Army as a failure of German tactics, or else a Soviet victory by sheer numbers and brute force. Not enough time is spent developing the story of Soviet strategy on the battlefield.
He didn’t have any. In both of the presidential elections he ran in, Hindenburg ran as an independent candidate. In fact, in both cases, he almost didn’t run- unlike his wartime partner Ludendorff, who threw himself into politics with great vigor(and proved fairly unsuccessful at it), Hindenburg was an old and tired man, and had little interest in or love of politics.
The only reason he ran was when Ebert died in 1925 and emergency elections brought forward no winner, a group of several mostly conservative parties convinced him to run, hoping his popularity would tip the scales. His main backers were Deutsche Volkspartei and Deutsche Nationale Volkspartei, respectively a conservative-liberal(in the classical sense) and a conservative-nationalist party. Those two had put up a joint candidate, former Minister of the Interior Karl Jarres, in the emergency elections. Jarres had gotten the most votes, but it was not enough for the required majority. Hindenburg was also backed by the centrist-monarchist Bayerische Volkspartei(seeing a naming theme yet?). And finally, after their preferred candidate Ludendorff dropped out with a terrible showing in the emergency elections, the two fairly small völkisch parties, Deutschvölkische Freiheitspartei and of course the NSDAP itself endorsed him as well.
The second time he ran, where, as was the last time, he almost didn’t until again, his supporters convinced him. Ironically, this time, his support base had almost completely changed: this mostly had to do with the stakes at the election. In 1925, the election was in a dysfunctional but still somehow working republic, where respective sides put out candidates aligned with their ideology: Hindenburg ran with the support of the German conservatives and nationalists and monarchists, against Wilhelm Marx representing the Zentrum, the social democrats and other center and center-left parties.
In 1932, during the second elections, Hindenburg’s chief rivals were Thälmann running for the Kommunistische Partei Deutschlands, and Hitler himself running with the rising star of the NSDAP behind him. Both being vocal and sworn enemies of the Republic, it proved now to be the parties of more centrist leanings that flocked to Hindenburg, seeing in the venerable, beloved field marshal the Weimar Republic’s last chance of survival. With DNVP running with its own candidate, Stahlhelm leader Theodor Duesterberg, Hindenburg’s 1925 base of support was reduced to the Deutsche Volkspartei and the Bayerische Volkspartei, which were then bolstered by the Zentrum and the social democrats flocking to him en masse.
‘With Him’- election propaganda for Hindenburg’s candicacy in 1932. In both his campaigns, Hindenburg personally did little campaigning and few public addresses: but he did not need to. The hero of Tannenberg, Hindenburg’s personal appeal crossed most lines of ideology- the old field marshal stood as the venerable head of the Republic, a widely considered symbol of military victory and resoluteness against adversity.
In the end, however, despite the almost mythical reputation he had, Hindenburg was only human, and an old one at that. The support of his old enemies brought Hindenburg to triumph over Hitler, and bought the Weimar Republic its survival for a while- but it had a cost. In the old field marshal’s mind, a disappointment lurked, that his victory had relied on people who seven years ago had been his staunchest opposers, and a distrust for their seeming fidelity began to fester.
On its own, mayhaps, it would remain festering only. But a coalition that only stuck together in name of Hindenburg could not last. Soon, its members were at each other’s throats again, and came along Kurt von Schleicher, whose boundless ambition for power demanded that the obstacles before it be removed. His whispers in Hindenburg’s ear soon undermined the reigning Brüning government, then his own ally Papen.
But Schleicher hit a tougher rock than himself. The National Socialists, whom he saw easily manipulatable on his climb to power, completely out-played him. In the end, all the opportunities Schleicher had made exploiting that gnawing thought in Hindenburg’s head benefited none other than Adolf Hitler.
In the end, all that triumph in the 1932 elections bought the Weimar Republic was one more year of life.
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He was the last one to stop Hitler. He even set up the ground works to restore the Kaiser to stop Hitler. Yet when the time came the pro democracy parties chosen fascism to monarchism
First, we need to delve into the meaning of the term.
The word translated as ‘patriotic’ in The Great Patriotic War is Otechestvennaya, originating from otechestvo, meaning Fatherland, a term that is probably not as familiar as Rodina is to Western audiences.
Taken literally, Otechestvennaya has a meaning roughly like ‘domestic’ or ‘concerning the Fatherland’. It was this meaning in which it was first applied- the term was first used in connection to a military conflict when referring to Napoleon’s invasion of Russia. Back then, it was extremely literal: it was the ‘war for the Fatherland’(the ‘Great’ adjective was not applied) because the Russian soldiers were fighting in the Fatherland. As opposed to pretty much every war Russia fought in the previous century, Russian troops were fighting on their home soil, rather than abroad- hence, it was the war taking place in, and for the Fatherland.
Wİth nationalist ideals taking greater importance as the 19th century progressed, the meaning transformed. Rather than being a factual descriptor of the nature of the campaign, Otechestvennaya voyna took the meaning that causes it to be translated as ‘Patriotic War’ these days- the war for the Fatherland, as in; for the sake of the Fatherland. The adjective ‘Great’ was also first applied to it about three decades after Napoleon’s invasion.
Nikolay Raevsky leads elements of his corps on the charge at the Battle of Saltanovka, 1812- as painted by Nikolay Samokish. The painting was made in 1912- on the centennial of the war, during a time where the defeat of Napoleon’s invasion was at the height of its ‘fame’ so to speak.
Though not as well known, the term was also applied to some degree for the First World War, as an allusion to the Napoleon conflict which in the Russian psyche had already started to entrench as a patriotic, great conflict of nation. And then, we come to the Second World War.
Lionizing the triumphs of Tsarist Russia wasn’t the kind of thing you’d expect from the Soviet Union of the early years- far from it, the early Soviet Union abhorred nationalist sentiment, and looked ill on lionizing Russian national heroes of the past. Certainly, the soldiers of the Union weren’t being exhorted to fight for country or nation in the thirties: instead, calls were to the mission of Lenin, the future of the Revolution, the vision of the communist ideal.
As anyone familiar with the history of the Soviet Union in the twenties and thirties is doubtlessly aware of, the recent memory of communism in the Union was… mixed. Major industrial and infrastructural advancements had been paid for in human lives- literally, as they had been paid for with grain exports in excess of what the country’s agriculture could provide, and widespread famines had killed many. This, paired with vicious repression of multiple social and ethnic groups seen as threats, did not do much to endear communism to the common people.
And then Germany came knocking.
Fundamentally, the communist project itself had become deeply unpopular for many. In general, it’s not common for people to fight and die for any ideology, but the growing unpopularity of communism in the Union did not help. Few people in the Soviet Union genuinely were willing to die for Lenin’s ideals. But they would fight, tenaciously and viciously, for their country. For their nations. For their fatherland. They would fight, and die if it called for it.
And it called for them, and they fought, and they died.
With the onset of the war against Germany, all the pre-war exhortations to the glory and future of the communist revolution vanished from Soviet propaganda. In its place were callbacks to the past triumphs of the Union’s nations, and lionizations of its past heroes- men whose veneration would’ve been considered reactionarism just before the war. Among all of these efforts, was the name of the war- first applied to it within days of its start. Velikaya Otechestvennaya voyna.
The Great Patriotic War. Or, if translated more literally, the Great War for the Fatherland. It did not just brand the war as one fought for the very existence of the ‘Fatherland’(which, to be fair, it was), but also was a very obvious callback to Napoleon’s seemingly successful but ultimately failed invasion: a conflict widely still remembered at the time as a great national struggle, to which Soviet wartime propaganda made many callbacks.
Soviet wartime propaganda poster- depicting Napoleon being chased away at bayonet point, and Hitler being impaled by another bayonet. ‘It was like that… It will be like that!’ The message was clear- the war was depicted as an analogue of the Patriotic War of 1812, with the same expected outcome and same national importance.
‘Patriotism’ meant in the Soviet Union what it means everywhere: fervent, fierce devotion to one’s own country. But the term ‘the Great Patriotic War’ meant more than its literal reading of ‘the great war fought with patriotism’. It was a callback to triumphs of the past, and a loud, clear exhortation to every citizen of the Soviet Union: to fight, not for communism, not for Lenin, but for their country, for the Soviet Union.
It was a departure from the traditionally communist contempt of nationalism, and it proved strikingly effective. Even after the Second World War ended, the old single-minded focus towards the glory of the Revolution did not return: for the memories of the past and love of country and nation had been an effective motivator in the hearts of patriots, and so it was clung to until the collapse of the Union.
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Reminds me of the Song Katyusha. A song not of ideology, not of hopes and dreams. And not even of nationalism.
But of a girl awaiting her hero back home, his letters clutched in her hands. The song translates well to every single ethnic group and nationality that fought with the Soviets in the war. I
… (more)As a Russian, I can only say: Bravo, you nailed it perfectly!
A few brief words on the Kalmyks- what drove them to collaboration with the Wehrmacht, how most of them stayed true to their come country despite it all, and the sadly too late recognition of their services.
Amateur military historian and fiction writer
In the Second World War, for Soviet collaborators with the Wehrmacht and the Waffen-SS, generally two primary motivations reigned: a hatred of the Soviet government, often borne out of ills perpetrated upon them by Stalin in the years past, and a pragmatic desire for better treatment at the hands of the German occupiers.
For the Kalmyks, it was mostly the former.
Kalmyk volunteer in the Wehrmacht, picture from the German federal archives.
Usually, the term Freiwilligen, meaning ‘volunteer’, always sits a bit sketchy when it’s affixed onto German volunteer auxiliaries of the Second World War. On one hand, there had been enough deserters from the Soviet side or emigres who joined definitely voluntarily to make the claim that a not insignificant part of those formations were made up by genuine volunteers. On the other hand, with so many men coming from prisoner of war camps or occupied population centers, it’s also likely that there were many motivated not merely by anti-communism, but a much more typical desire for better treatment than the dismal squalor of many PoW camps. Of course, history did not record their opinions, and we can only speculate.
The Kalmyks, however, were a different case. As with the other traditionally nomadic and semi-nomadic peoples of the Soviet Union, the Kalmyks had suffered greatly during the twenties and the thirties: a famine as a result of absurd food requisitions had killed about a third of the Kalmyk population in the twenties, which had triggered two revolts, both of which were suppressed by force and only resulted in even harsher repression and de-kulakization policies. With some seventy thousand Kalmyks dead due to Soviet policies and another twenty thousand exiled to Siberia, it’d be an understatement to say that the Kalmyks weren’t much fond of Stalin.
The Germans were well aware of the anti-communist sentiment among the traditionally nomadic peoples of the Union. As early as August 1941, Major Ivan Kononov, a Don Cossack, had deserted to the Germans with his entire regiment, and had brought thousands of Soviet servicemen to volunteer to fight for the Germans in a number of visits to German prisoner of war camps. Armed with this foreknowledge, when Germans marched into Kalmykia in 1942, they were doing so with the intent to exploit it.
Save for the handful of Jews who lived there(who met an expectably deadly end), the Kalmyks under German occupation were mostly free of harrassment or violence by their occupiers- instead, propaganda efforts begun in earnest, aided by a handful of Kalmyk emigres who had fled Russia after the Soviet takeover.
With the Kalmyks’ small population and the general difficulty with which treason usually comes to people, the Kalmückisches Kavalleriekorps wasn’t the biggest unit- overall, just over five thousand Kalmyks served in it in total. But they had a disproportionate impact. Kalmyks were expert horsemen, and familiar with the terrain: they were mobile, especially across countryside where motor vehicles weren’t exactly ideal, and thus made first class reconnaissance troops. Furthermore, many of them genuine volunteers and determined anti-communists, they proved well adapted to the inimitable brutality that anti-partisan warfare, one of Germans’ chosen use for them, inevitably produced.
Here, it is worth remembering that the Kalmyks hardly deserve the imagery of nation-wide treason this reflects on them. Despite everything they had previously suffered under the Stalin regime, most of the Kalmyks remained steadfastly loyal to their home country. For every Kalmyk who fought in the Wehrmacht, four fought in the ranks of the Red Army. They received thousands of awards for bravery and meritorous service. Eight of them became Heroes of the Soviet Union- the single highest distinction a soldier could earn.
It did not, however, serve to redeem them in the eyes of Stalin- despite their selfless fidelity, they were held to account for the sins of their kinsmen who went over to the German side. In the last days of 1943, all Kalmyk personnel of the Red Army were discharged overnight. The Kalmyk Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic was dissolved, the Kalmyk people branded as traitors, and the entire population was deported to Siberia in a few days. More than sixteen thousand Kalmyks died in the process- at the time, this was a fifth of the population of Kalmykia.
The exile lasted for over a decade before the Kalmyks’ sacrifices found recognition. In 1956, under Khruschev, the forced exile was officially ended. The Kalmyk Autonomous Oblast, soon to become an autonomous republic again, was established. Their honour and homeland restored, after more than a decade of blood and hardship, the sacrifices of more than twenty thousand Kalmyks who fought under the red star found some measure of recognition.
In Elista, today capital of the Republic of Kalmykia, one of the city’s major squares has been named after Khruschev since then.
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· In the Second World War, for Soviet collaborators with the Wehrmacht and the Waffen-SS, generally two primary motivations reigned: a hatred of the Soviet government, often borne out of ills perpetrated upon them by Stalin in the years past, and a pragmatic desire for better treatment at the hands of the German occupiers.
For the Kalmyks, it was mostly the former.
Kalmyk volunteer in the Wehrmacht, picture from the German federal archives.
Usually, the term Freiwilligen, meaning ‘volunteer’, always sits a bit sketchy when it’s affixed onto German volunteer auxiliaries of the Second World War. On one hand, there had been enough deserters from the Soviet side or emigres who joined definitely voluntarily to make the claim that a not insignificant part of those formations were made up by genuine volunteers. On the other hand, with so many men coming from prisoner of war camps or occupied population centers, it’s also likely that there were many motivated not merely by anti-communism, but a much more typical desire for better treatment than the dismal squalor of many PoW camps. Of course, history did not record their opinions, and we can only speculate.
The Kalmyks, however, were a different case. As with the other traditionally nomadic and semi-nomadic peoples of the Soviet Union, the Kalmyks had suffered greatly during the twenties and the thirties: a famine as a result of absurd food requisitions had killed about a third of the Kalmyk population in the twenties, which had triggered two revolts, both of which were suppressed by force and only resulted in even harsher repression and de-kulakization policies. With some seventy thousand Kalmyks dead due to Soviet policies and another twenty thousand exiled to Siberia, it’d be an understatement to say that the Kalmyks weren’t much fond of Stalin.
The Germans were well aware of the anti-communist sentiment among the traditionally nomadic peoples of the Union. As early as August 1941, Major Ivan Kononov, a Don Cossack, had deserted to the Germans with his entire regiment, and had brought thousands of Soviet servicemen to volunteer to fight for the Germans in a number of visits to German prisoner of war camps. Armed with this foreknowledge, when Germans marched into Kalmykia in 1942, they were doing so with the intent to exploit it.
Save for the handful of Jews who lived there(who met an expectably deadly end), the Kalmyks under German occupation were mostly free of harrassment or violence by their occupiers- instead, propaganda efforts begun in earnest, aided by a handful of Kalmyk emigres who had fled Russia after the Soviet takeover.
With the Kalmyks’ small population and the general difficulty with which treason usually comes to people, the Kalmückisches Kavalleriekorps wasn’t the biggest unit- overall, just over five thousand Kalmyks served in it in total. But they had a disproportionate impact. Kalmyks were expert horsemen, and familiar with the terrain: they were mobile, especially across countryside where motor vehicles weren’t exactly ideal, and thus made first class reconnaissance troops. Furthermore, many of them genuine volunteers and determined anti-communists, they proved well adapted to the inimitable brutality that anti-partisan warfare, one of Germans’ chosen use for them, inevitably produced.
Here, it is worth remembering that the Kalmyks hardly deserve the imagery of nation-wide treason this reflects on them. Despite everything they had previously suffered under the Stalin regime, most of the Kalmyks remained steadfastly loyal to their home country. For every Kalmyk who fought in the Wehrmacht, four fought in the ranks of the Red Army. They received thousands of awards for bravery and meritorous service. Eight of them became Heroes of the Soviet Union- the single highest distinction a soldier could earn.
It did not, however, serve to redeem them in the eyes of Stalin- despite their selfless fidelity, they were held to account for the sins of their kinsmen who went over to the German side. In the last days of 1943, all Kalmyk personnel of the Red Army were discharged overnight. The Kalmyk Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic was dissolved, the Kalmyk people branded as traitors, and the entire population was deported to Siberia in a few days. More than sixteen thousand Kalmyks died in the process- at the time, this was a fifth of the population of Kalmykia.
The exile lasted for over a decade before the Kalmyks’ sacrifices found recognition. In 1956, under Khruschev, the forced exile was officially ended. The Kalmyk Autonomous Oblast, soon to become an autonomous republic again, was established. Their honour and homeland restored, after more than a decade of blood and hardship, the sacrifices of more than twenty thousand Kalmyks who fought under the red star found some measure of recognition.
In Elista, today capital of the Republic of Kalmykia, one of the city’s major squares has been named after Khruschev since then.
Normal reaction.
After being mistreated.
Most would want to reciprocate the act in any way possible.
Understandable? Yes- I can understand their motivations. I can even somewhat sympathize. But in the end, more than Stalin called on the Kalmyks to fight, and those who turned their backs to it were still traitors- I didn’t condone that when Schmenkel did it to Germany, and I’m not going to condone i
… (more)The anti-kulakization policies against landowners and farmers sound “reasonable” theoretically speaking, but applying those rules to nomadic people (Siberian, Tatars, Mongol, and Finno-Ugric/Uralic people in Russia) that herd reindeer, sheep or goats, horses or camels, and other livestock is just cr
… (more)It is not “crazy and deluded" at all. Communism is not social justice, it is social control. The only way the Stalinist regime could put nomads under the boot was to take away their cattle and horses. Starving and without the means to roam, the only alternative to death is submission, and integratio
… (more)Yes. Yes it is. It is clearly nonsense. But it is nonsense well worth dissecting- and as someone who himself has been part of that myth for a while in the past and certainly isn’t proud of it, I believe I am in a good position to answer how this came to be the case.
Fundamentally, the myth of the clean Wehrmacht was borne out of a grave error- and the opportunity it gave to a lot of people. The legal and popular indictment of the SS as a criminal institution, rooted in the Nuremberg Trials, would go on to have grave consequences.
The aforementioned indictment was rooted in understandable motivations: the SS, as an institution, had been guilty of a significant list of crimes. And to be fair to the Nuremberg Trials here, the original indictment there was more nuanced and understandable than what it later became in popular memory through a mix of perception and enforcement. But the key problem with regards to this criminalization, especially in the popular mind, was that it created the dangerous misperception that criminals in the SS were and became criminals because they were in the SS, and not because of actions they themselves might have undertaken and personality traits they themselves possessed. Crude application of institutional guilt understated the factor of the individual, and drowned out motivations and beliefs that needed analysis. Criminality was assigned unto the group, and stemmed from the group.
Criminalizing the members of the SS en masse where other major institutions of state, for obvious reasons, escaped such censure, was understandable, but it had the side effect of causing the misconception that criminals in the SS were criminals because they were in the SS, or had become such because they were in the SS- this was, to some degree, true, but the importance of individual factors went ignored.
And this misconception, and the focused legal censure on the SS, meant that the SS, as an institution, made an extremely suitable scapegoat.
An organization known to have been linked to an array of atrocities, and whose all volunteer members were indicted and declared at Nuremberg as criminals, the SS couldn’t exactly be expected to defend itself and be particularly credible. This meant that practically anyone in the Third Reich who wasn’t in the SS, and who could possibly be linked to any of the regime’s more unsavory activities, could blame everything on the SS, and rely on the Nuremberg decisions to put legitimacy to their claims. Nobody would speak in defense of the SS, other than the SS- and if the SS did it, few would believe it.
This meant everyone was willing to, and able to, pile their dirty laundry on the SS- including Wehrmacht men, some trying to save themselves, some the military’s honour. And with the major crimes of which the SS was guilty already known, nobody really batted an eye at the thought that they might’ve done more and more. The Waffen-SS followed the same ideal, trying to pack themselves in with the Wehrmacht and piling their own laundry on even more despicable elements of the SS(such as the Einsatzgruppen and concentration camp personnel) while obfuscating the connections between these and the Waffen-SS.
The core of this problem came from a deep lethargy on behalf of the International Military Tribunal. On one hand, the Nuremberg Trials proved strikingly unwilling to take the effort necessary to open the background into the motivations and the actions of the SS and instead favored a blanket condemnation- on the other hand, it similarly lacked the will and verve to open up the history of the the actions of the Wehrmacht beyond targeting of the highest commanders.
In sum, the Trials either failed to realize the fact that the line that separated criminality from acceptable conduct ran through the Wehrmacht and the SS rather than in between them, or lacked either the interest or the vigor for the intensive research it would entail to draw said line in an accurate fashion. The end result created an easy scapegoat for all the ills of the Reich, one that was seized upon to create a myth that to this day lasts to various degrees.
Was it true? Of course it wasn’t. As said, the line between conduct with integrity and criminal activity went through the Wehrmacht, and a lot of people were on the wrong side of it. Just as much as many individual soldiers were individually innocent, many others of all ranks weren’t.
It appears too late, by now, to know the extent. Archival record that might have served to establish more clear numbers of the guilty has been long lost, or abandoned at the bottom of archives where few seek to delve into them. People who might’ve testified or confessed are dead. The great scope of the Eastern Front devoured the countless horrors of the war, where they now lie in the sodden soil and nobody knows where.
But in the end, history has shown that, it wasn’t simply just one or two random incidents. That although we may never be able to give a coherent, ironclad number to the question ‘how much?’, what is known suffices to give the answer, ‘enough.’ Like everyone, the Wehrmacht ought to carry the burden of its own sins, which it certainly wasn’t free of.
It might well be true to make the statement that the Wehrmacht was, overall, cleaner than the SS was- but that doesn’t mean it was clean. All must face the consequences of their actions, and we the world of today, must not repeat the faults of the International Military Tribunal.
It’s an old myth. It’s understandable why it became so prominent. I can’t exactly blame anyone for having adhered to it- as said, I myself had been there at some point in the past, and I understand how it works, came to be, and became so everpresent.
But it’s past time it’s laid to rest.
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Just out of curiosity, isn’t it possible that the Wehrmacht wasn’t as seriously looked at for two other reasons? The first being that as the United States recognized the Soviet Union as a threat, they needed “good German officers” to staff a new military. Secondly, they needed some German Officers t
… (more)These are accurate reasons, but these are accurate reasons for why this myth had the chance to entrench— not how it began in the first place.
Come fifties and sixties, the US definitely did have a vested interest in letting bygones be bygones and not poking too deep into the closet of the Wehrmacht.
… (more)Michael CataldoI thought that Operation Overcast (Precursor to Paperclip) began early in 1945 and that the British had an earlier program? There were people in the American government who saw the Soviets as enemies much earlier. Records of the Secretary of Defense (RG 330)
Of course … you are correct …. sorry that Cem Arslan (original replier above) did not include this obvious point: the United States itself is guilty of letting the Wehrmacht “off the hook” …. purely because we were already fighting the “Cold War” with the USSR. Shame on us, too!
Very well summarized. I’m still gobsmacked that the US Army would allow Franz Halder to head-up the writing of the history of combat operations by the German military.
Your assessment is a necessary corrective.
On one hand, it had to be the Germans who wrote those studies- nobody was going to be able to write a history of German combat operations than the Germans themselves. Especially with so much of military archives lost, the German generals represented the last carriers of a wealth of military and hist
… (more)Michael HuttonAgreed. I’ve always been impressed how von Manstein in his memoirs managed to overlook the fact that somewhere between 3–4 million Russian POWs died in German prisoner of war camps.
Here’s the thing. The statement that Dönitz did not ‘cooperate with regard to the Jews’ is entirely, completely true.
It’s also completely irrelevant.
This is the kind of popular view that is resistant to being corrected. If it were so that Dönitz not having co-operated with regards to the Jews(or the Reich’s other criminal acts) was false, it would be easily refuted, and gone into history as myth. It isn’t. It is indeed true that Dönitz played no active role in the Holocaust.
The problem is, let’s say, Dönitz wanted to be involved in the Holocaust. He wanted to take an active role. He wanted to carry it out- let’s assume that.
What the hell was he going to do?
Dönitz was a Navy man- the one German military arm that had no real duties of territorial occupation, no presence on land, and no ‘people’ under its authority that would be targeted by the Holocaust. How was he going to co-operate? He couldn’t have done anything even if he was actively trying to: his authority didn’t overlap with any duties that would permit him to take part in the Holocaust.
Would he, if he could? We may never be able to claim conclusively- but he was an ardent National Socialist, he most likely[1] knew what was happening, and although he couldn’t really have done anything to stop it, he never raised an issue with it: and mind, Dönitz was a willful man, with an iron determination and a willingness to argue aplenty with Hitler when he disagreed with his actions. If Dönitz disapproved, and ever made said disapproval vocal, it did not make it into record.
Dönitz never really formed a persistent opposition to Hitler, although he argued viciously with him on several accounts over disagreements concerning military matters: something no German officer had to ‘get away with’. It is true that he played no role in the Holocaust, but whether to play such a role or not was never within his power.
Fundamentally, the whole claim about Dönitz being innocent of the Holocaust is pointless- it’s true, but it’s pointless, and can’t be used to make any real judgment of the man. It’s not a virtue to not have done something that you couldn’t do in the first place.
Footnotes:
[1]: Dönitz’s most close known association to a clear and conclusive wartime evidence of the Holocaust is 6 October 1943’s conference in Posen. Dönitz was present in the conference, where he gave a speech after Speer. It is not conclusively established whether he was still present or had excused himself by the evening, when Himmler spoke and openly mentioned the Holocaust: it’s possible that if he had left by the time Himmler spoke, never reviewed the minutiaes of the rest of the meeting afterwards, and wasn’t informed of the nature of the speech by any subordinate who might’ve been present, it’s possible he managed to remain largely unaware of it.
It’s possible, but it’s not the most likely outcome.
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I feel maybe he would despise how many resources the Holocaust was draining on the war effort if he knew the details of it, but that doesn’t earn him credit for being a decent person.
The man could be in hell right now next to Himmler himself, and I’d not weep.
Eventually, he made the step from “arguing against bad ideas” to outright ignoring a direct order not to launch Hannibal.
From that, I would make a qualified judgement that, had he been aware of the drain on resources that was the final solution*, he would oppose it on the practical grounds or at lea
… (more)No… but with a hint of ‘yes’.
It is surprising but true to find out that the German engine of extermination, at the top, was guided by extremely little sadism. The war of extermination upon the ‘subhumans’ under the Reich’s authority was borne not out of simple hatred, but an ideological structure far more complex and insidious.
If you sat across, say, Himmler, and asked him one simple question, ‘What is your ultimate goal?’, the answer wouldn’t be ‘To exterminate the Jewish race’. Instead, it’d be a statement that seems much more noble- something along the lines of securing the future of the German people, of the European civilization. If you weren’t familiar with the ‘we must save our civilization’ rhetoric that has been used so often, oft to chilling purposes, and if you had no idea who Himmler and the National Socialists were, that question and answer would leave in you an impression of sincerity, conviction, and righteousness.
It was this that freed the enforcement of National Socialism’s darkest policies from a need for sadists, and made murderers out of the most ordinary people. Conviction.
The wealth they possessed we took from them. I gave a strict order, which has been carried out by SS Obergruppenfuehrer Pohl, that this wealth will of course be turned over to the Reich in its entirety. We have taken none of it for ourselves. Individuals who have erred will be punished in accordance with the order given by me at the start, threatening that anyone who takes as much as a single Mark of this money is a dead man. A number of SS men - they are not very - many committed this offense, and they shall die. There will be no mercy. We had the moral right, we had the duty towards our people, to destroy this people that wanted to destroy us. But we do not have the right to enrich ourselves by so much as a fur, as a watch, by one Mark or a cigarette or anything else. We do not want, in the end, because we destroyed a bacillus, to be infected by this bacillus and to die. I will never stand by and watch while even a small rotten spot develops or takes hold. Wherever it may form we will together burn it away. All in all, however, we can say that we have carried out this most difficult of tasks in a spirit of love for our people. And we have suffered no harm to our inner being, our soul, our character...
The above is an excerpt from Himmler’s speech given to a cadre of ranking SS officers in Posen, 4 October 1943- the bolding added by me.
This is a chilling statement.
This is not a simple expression of base hatred. These are the words of a man so truly convinced that he’s doing something incredibly difficult, motivated purely by ‘love for our people’… something that comes across as a noble and respectable notion, right up until the point where you notice that the ‘most difficult of tasks’ is extermination of millions of people. An utterly monstrous act.
At its root, this was the root of the Nazi racial policy: a seemingly noble goal, a total conviction to achieve it, and a completely ridiculous array of völkisch racial and cultural theories that set a series of bone-chillingly horrifying acts as the ‘requirements’ for the establishment of said noble goal. A perverse pseudoscience that declared the destruction of an array of racial and cultural groups as the ‘necessity’ that had to be undertaken.
Far from being driven by sadism, there was a strange fascination with keeping the killings ‘humane’- an interesting example is Otto Ohlendorf, who abhorred the close-range ‘back of the head’ execution, despised the gas vans, and commented with marked contempt on the brutal pogroms perpetrated by the Eastern European auxiliaries that accompanied him. But while he was making all these complaints, Ohlendorf was also the commander of Einsatzgruppe D and ultimately responsible for hundreds of thousands of murders- that most of them were carried out in an almost military fashion by firing squads, a method Ohlendorf considered much more ‘humane’, probably wasn’t much comfort to the victims.
Men didn’t have to be taught hatred or sadism. What was to be pressed on them was the sensation of a struggle for their survival, for their future. Once an ardent belief that it was for the good of Germany and the world set in, once the necessity became belief, the conviction took over as the driver of horrors.
But.
Jews and Romani being loaded onto trains, destined for the camp at Kulmhof. Kulmhof was different than the concentration camps at the time: it was the first of the extermination camps. More chillingly, it would become the ‘pilot project’ for the extermination camps: lessons learned at Kulmhof made the rest even deadlier.
Humans are creatures of instinct, as much as conscious thought. Knowing a human died or suffered is nothing in comparison to seeing it happen, something we understand to be horrible at a far deeper level than conscious thought. Himmler called the extermination machine he oversaw a noble, righteous thing when all he was doing was sit in an office and review ghastly numbers, but when he actually saw it first-hand for once, he vomited on the spot, and almost fainted. In the East, rates of alcoholism soared among men in Einsatzgruppen duties. Fundamentally, everything the Reich did to make sure the murders were carried out in more ‘humane’ ways, ways that would have less of an effect on the executioners’ psyche and make them more able to avoid realizing the reality of their actions, could only have limited effect.
Men directly involved in those murders knew what they were doing. Deep down, they were faced with a horrifying reality they could not deny. In that environment, two kinds of people easily prospered: those with iron conviction of their righteousness, and those with a sadist’s heart. Among men who took part in wholesale slaughter and knew it, those who took pleasure naturally prospered; and although the likes of Himmler may have personally disliked this sadism, they were well willing to let it serve the goal of slaughter, as evidenced by Himmler’s approval of Oskar Dirlewanger.
Sadists weren’t specifically chosen for those jobs, and indeed, sadism per se was technically frowned on. But genuine sadism could make an exceptionally capable executioner; and such a man could rise very far in that machine.
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In two years that I was absent, your writing has become even better. Love you Cem. And Happy New Year to you!
The best depiction in movies is Hans Landa from Inglourious Basterds. Someone smart and ambitious who uses the Nazi machine to advance in power and prestige. He’s very similar to Reinhard Heydrich in this.
The chilling implications of referring to National Socialism as ‘the best system ever created’, in light of the fact that it eventually became responsible for an unsettling amount of deaths, temporarily set aside(we’ll talk more on this in a moment), there’s two general schools of thought concerning the economic abilities of the Third Reich. There’s the old school approach, that regards it as the German economic miracle- the school that originated in the thirties as people witnessed the economic revival of Germany, and then there’s the new point of view that regards it all as smoke and mirrors, a farce that hid impending economic disaster.
As is oft the case for topics like this, the truth’s somewhere in the middle.
Fundamentally, the core difference between the economic policies of the Nazis and the previous Weimar governments wasn’t that they were doing something radically different, but that they could do it at all. At its core, the economic policies of Hitler’s Germany before the war was strikingly similar to those adopted by preceding governments, and in fact were run by the same people.
A meeting of the Reichsbank Transfer Commission, 1934, photo from the German federal archives. Leftmost is Hjalmar Schacht- the president of the Reichsbank, who had held that position since 1923 with an interruption from 1930 to 1933. The man who would go on to be the architect of Germany’s interwar economy as the soon-to-be Reich Minister of Economy, Schacht wasn’t exactly an old guard of the Nazi movement: instead, he was a former member of the German Democratic Party, who only had a membership in the NSDAP come 1937, and even that was only a honorary one.
The difference was that economic solutions that would’ve availed Germany before often found themselves faced with a deadlock. When people like, say, Brüning had to take care of the sheer economic catastrophe during his tenure as Reichskanzler, he needed either the backing of a Reichstag that was fundamentally fractured, or the backing of President Hindenburg who had grown old, tired, and increasingly prone to manipulation by that point. Indeed, this was exactly how Brüning’s government had collapsed, with his direly needed austerity policies torpedoing his support base in the Reichstag and Schleicher whispering venom in Hindenburg’s ear.
Having come to power with greater popular support than anyone in the Weimar Republic had had since 1919, and with legal measures that granted them wider executive powers than most past governments, Hitler and his followers could enact desperately needed economic measures without political obstruction. There was nothing unique or new about those measures, and indeed even Schacht’s famous MEFO bills system was done before in 1932 under, again, the Brüning government, in order to raise capital for public works. But unlike Brüning, Hitler’s government actually could effectively pass these measures: there wasn’t going to be any motions of no confidence in the Reichstag.
In essence, the role of the Nazis in the German economic recovery was that they recognized a solution when they saw one, and had the organization and power to actually see it done. The solutions they would’ve needed to follow, and the groundwork that needed to be laid for the success of those policies, were already done in the past. This isn’t exactly a glowing triumph of the National Socialism here.
Now, to render unto Caesar, this was all they had to do: recognizing the problem, the solutions of the past experts, and having the will and popular mandate to do it. But while the solution fit the circumstances very well, it’s risky to extrapolate qualities of the system from it. What it shows us is a base level of economic competence, which is something, but I wouldn’t go around singing the Horst Wessel Lied because of that.
A few words on the German economy pre-war are probably warranted here. As said before, the common view portrays it either as a picture of rapid recovery and efficiency, or as a hideous machine of plunder only existing through liquidation of assets and rapidly approaching collapse- both are part of the full picture. Fact of the matter is, fundamentally, at its core, the economic structure established in the early years of Hitler’s regime worked, and worked well without any crippling flaws inherent in the system(reminder, we’re discussing purely economy here), yet it was simultaneously nearing economic collapse as the years went by.
The reason that allowed these seemingly mutually exclusive circumstances to coexist was the question of spending- namely, the fact that from 1933 to 1939, German government expenditures were about seventy percent more than the government’s total revenue from all sources. Now, it’s a general economic axiom that deficit spending is a good stimulator of economy in times of depression, and as a nation recovering still from the catastrophic collapse of 1929, Germany could of course be expected to be running some measure of deficit: but it’s also fact of the matter that some sixty percent of the spending, a sum more than the total government revenue on its own, were spent on military expenditures.
The battleship Gneisenau, shortly before the outbreak of the war. Gneisenau was the first of the German capital ships that were laid down under Hitler’s rule- it would not be the last. For six pre-war years, rearmament would be the top expenditure of the Reich.
This was the detail that meant that Nazi Germany’s otherwise functional economy was nonetheless growing financially unsustainable- not because of any inherent flaw in the system, but because the ‘fruits’ of the economy were being invested with immense budgetary deficit into catching up with nations that had fifteen years of head start with armaments. At this point, in so far as evaluating the German economic system is concerned, we’re faced with the Schacht versus Hitler quandary. Schacht, understandably as an economic expert, argued correctly that the massive German rearmament was having crippling economic consequences as national debt soared. On the other hand, Hitler could make the case that international circumstances dictated that Germany rearm at least to some significant degree- the War to End All Wars had ended nothing, and her situation of military impotence crippled Germany not only abroad, but also at home; something Weimar governments experienced bitterly as they had to bankroll a whole host of paramilitaries in the early twenties to defend the country from a string of revolts and uprisings, who then proved to be a painful ache themselves as the Kapp Putsch showed. In the end, the Schacht-versus-Hitler conflict saw Schacht removed from his post, and rearmament went onward.
Thus, we’re left asking the question of exactly how much of the German rearmament was a necessity, rather than a luxury Germany could have avoided with a different approach to foreign policy. Needless to say, this is too much of a diversion from this answer, and we will not stray far into it. But briefly, what can be said in respect to pre-war economic policies adopted under National Socialism is that they did work, and work well- but that working well highlighted not the fact that National Socialism had an extremely sound economic policy, for there wasn’t much in those policies that had originated in the NSDAP, or even advocated by it in its earlier days. What it highlights is the success of National Socialism as a political movement: which bears note, but it’s not a way with which to judge how effective it would then be once it came to power.
And now that we’ve discussed the German economic recovery, it’s time for the core of the answer.

The above is an aerial photo of the Berlin Olympic Stadium, taken from the air, from German federal archives. Built solely for the purpose of the 1936 Olympics, in the middle of an entire complex also built for that sole purpose, the Olympiastadion was meant to be the crowning jewel of the Reich, and the whole Olympics became an event that brought immense publicity and national prestige to Germany.
But I’ve picked this one event out of all the cases of pre-war pomp and ceremony, because behind this picture is the forgotten tale of one man: one Hauptmann Wolfgang Fürstner, who was the commander and organizer of the Olympic village, until he was quietly demoted and replaced in June 1936. Why? Had he not done his job properly? No. He had.
Fürstner was a Mischling, a half-Jew, under the Nuremberg Laws. About two months later, he shot himself.
From a perspective of pure pragmatism, without any human or moral concerns thrown into it, National Socialism proved functional. It did not have the perfection ascribed to it in the question- even from said pragmatic view, its flaws followed, from a lack of any coherent organization of state insitutions except as fiefdoms, to its ham-fisted foreign policy. But, pragmatically, it did work- if it hadn’t, if the whole thing had driven to political collapse in a couple years, things would’ve been better, but despite its flaws, it worked well enough.
And it does not matter that it worked.
Even if National Socialism had managed to become the most successful and effective way to run a country(which it didn’t), it still wouldn’t matter with regards to the evaluation the question asks of us. It wouldn’t, and it doesn’t- because beneath everything ‘good’ that the NSDAP accomplished, beneath the economic recovery, Germany’s return to international relevance, the public works, the country rising up from a state of national self-contempt, the restoration of the military, beneath all the pomp and gild and ceremony and glory and success laid a growing heap of human misery, that kept growing only faster as the war went on and by the end had consumed millions. Because in the end, the very notions of völkisch philosophies inherent in the ideology itself led to a path of slaughter- a charnel heap of human lives and hopes against which any practical achievement could only pale.
Given a mission and a mandate by the German people to spearhead the nation on its quest to economic, social and political recovery, National Socialism stained its own success in these fields by a trail of blood and ash. Germany’s sacred virtues became corrupted fuel for a völkisch crusade of death. The nobility of a quest to restore Germany to honour and prosperity paled against the horrific ruin of acts committed in its name. No matter how gilded the letters in which the successes of National Socialism were written into history, the pages dripped with blood of innocents.
It was called upon to carry Germany to rebirth- instead, it held Germany by the arm, and led it down a descent into madness. This was the legacy of National Socialism, the backdrop against which its practical successes stand. An ideology, and a result, for which I can think of many descriptive words: but ‘best system ever created’ is not among them.
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Die Preise hoch
die Läden fest geschlossen
Die Not marschiert
mit ruhig-festem Schritt.
Es hungern nur
die kleinen Volksgenossen,
Die Großen hungern
nur im Geiste mit.
But National Socialism killed less people than any conterporary system, so it definitely better than everything else both in economic and humanitarian means.
“But National Socialism killed less people than any conterporary system”
Not true.
Bulat ZiganshinI bet that FDR alone killed more innocent people than entire Nazi Germany. And Stalin/Mao still outproduced him a lot. Do you know that in 1940 half-million Poles were sent to concentration camps? Soviet camps.
This is a very interesting legal area.
The general rule on this subject stems less from explicit law itself and more on common consensus and past precedent. Basically, the criminal act that in the Hague Conventions is defined as ‘to make improper use’ of enemy uniforms and insignia is, by consensus and precedent, refers to use of such in combat.
Utilization of false uniforms(or civilian clothing) for military purposes that aren’t combat, such as to infiltrate through enemy lines, is espionage. Engaging in combat with the enemy, while still disguised as an enemy or neutral force, is a war crime.
The difference stems from the fact that espionage, in so far as international laws of war are concerned, isn’t a crime- however, a soldier that isn’t properly distinguished by uniform and insignia as belonging the forces he belongs to, and is caught by the enemy while doing so, is not entitled to the legal protection assured to prisoners of war: thus, just as is the case with spies caught elsewhere and otherwise, he can(and likely will) be executed. But since espionage isn’t a war crime, if a soldier does this, successfully finishes his job, returns to friendly lines, and then is later captured while serving as a clearly identified soldier, he cannot be tried or punished as a war criminal for his past ruse: because it wasn’t a crime to begin with.
But if a group of soldiers impersonate enemy forces, and then voluntarily initiate combat with their enemy while still so disguised, that is a war crime, and personnel responsible for it can be later tried and sentenced.
The definitive ‘precedent’ to this was set concerning Unternehmen Greif, the German commando operation during the Battle of the Bulge. German commandos that were caught while they were in American uniform were routinely executed, but those commandos pretty much never initiated combat while still in disguise, and thus, once those that had successfully returned from their sabotage and disruption missions were later captured, nobody was sentenced in association with Greif- although a number of people, including the operation’s chief Skorzeny himself, were brought to trial where they were acquitted of that charge.
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Given your use of “voluntarily initiate”, am I correct in assuming that a spy or group of spies in enemy uniforms can defend themselves if attacked, and if they do successfully escape and are later caught, they will not be subject to war crimes prosecution?
For instance, a spy (wearing the uniform of
… (more)“Assuming” is actually an excellent choice of word here- since this is exactly what we have to do- assume.
As far as I’m aware of, there’s no legal precedent for this exact scenario of a group of disguised infiltrators being attacked while disguised, defending themselves, surviving to escape, and lat
… (more)Let me get this straight:
Espionage is technically OK, but only if you do it in uniform?
Doesn’t that defeat the whole point of espionage?
But if you do espionage without a uniform, succeed and survive, you can’t be executed for having done espionage without a uniform?
This all seems very wierd.
Well, no. Espionage is okay, even if you do it in uniform. It’s not a crime under international law- that’s why you can’t be executed for it if you’ve succeeded at it and gotten out, unless the acts you’ve taken as part of ‘espionage’ are crimes in and of themselves.
The reason you can be executed if
… (more)Niko NištaOh so if you go spying behind enemy lines dressed up as the army you are spying on, you’re not a criminal, but also not protected, which means you’ll get shot even if you surrender. But if you get away with it and get captured as a soldier afterwards, you can’t be shot for having done espionage? If you’re doing reconnaissance in your own uniform, you’re just a soldier, and normal terms and conditions apply. But what if you do espionage while dressed as a civilian? I’m assuming it’s the same as having been caught spying while wearing the uniform of the country you are spying on.
Espionage is technically OK, but only if you do it in uniform?
Yes, in that case it’s called reconnaissance.
But if you do espionage without a uniform, succeed and survive, you can’t be executed for having done espionage without a uniform?
Because, if they do succeed without getting caught, they can us
… (more)Niko NištaCan civilians do espionage? Or are they considered unlawful combatants, subject to execution?
Hitler’s tremor started in 1943, after he contracted influenza during a visit to the Eastern Front. It has been suggested it might have been post-encephalitic parkinsonism: the symptoms don’t match perfectly, but it was certainly a possibility.
However, the likely cause of his death wouldn’t be that. His most likely cause of death would be rapidly progressive coronary sclerosis: one of the most serious of his myriad health issues. Had he survived the war, and somehow wasn’t executed, it’d be likely that the coronary sclerosis would have killed him in under a decade.
I wonder, if Germany somehow won or wound up with a “Decent peace” would his underlings wait till the time and sclerosis do its work, or would he be helped along?
This space is normally for answers of mine that get deleted by the moderation... but it's as good a place as any to share this announcement as well, I suppose.
Amateur military historian and fiction writer
I have an announcement to make that needs desperately to be said and heard.
A few hours ago, I was writing a ticket to Quora to delete this account immediately, without the typical two week grace period, along with all content associated with it. I was one moment from sending it.
And I was very tempted to do it. But if I had, I would have ran away, without saying these words that I need to say. And I owe these words to anyone I have failed.
In all my time in Quora, I have given myself one singular mission: to write history, with honesty, truth, and integrity. I have written many answers widely considered exceptional in pursuit of said goal. I have gained fame for strictly adhering to it. And in the past few days, I was confronted with the fact that I have failed.
I have written before on just how much I have come forward in all my years of writing on Quora, in every way, shape or form. Now, I write better, in every way that matters: with more nuance, more fact, less pointless spectacle, and less arrogance. However, my memory has never been particularly good, and I have only just come to realize just how much better I write today, or, more relevant to the topic, just how much worse I wrote years ago.
As you might have realized by the PSA that went up on my profile a few days ago, I decided to undertake a review process of my old answers. In doing so, I found myself well and truly horrified.
To put it with the brutal honesty I ought to, many of my earliest answers and comments are truly horrifying. Problems range across a wide spectrum of a very off-putting brand of arrogance, a very lackluster quality of writing, a not insignificant amount of historical errors, imprecise and flawed phrasing, and rarest but sadly worst of all, a few very questionable conclusions and opinions with some disturbing implications. I have found myself staring at answers and comments that I would mercilessly slam today had I seen them written by someone else.
But the most unsettling fact about those is the fact that this is content out there, under my name- a name that today has a reputation for accurate and well researched content. It is that reputation that today retroactively stands behind some content that is neither accurate nor well researched. Thus, it represents a catastrophic and unacceptable failure of my self-declared mission: the promotion of pure and unvarnished truth.
In the past, I had resolved to let such answers stand, as a reminder to myself of just how far I had come. But that was a decision taken before I realized that the only thing wrong about them wasn’t simply a quality of writing: a badly written answer that is otherwise true will not harm anyone. Factual errors, arrogant attitudes, or some implications this world is better off without are a completely different matter, mostly borne out of past ignorance or arrogance, ironic given my own contempt of those. A not insignificant amount of my past content, especially at the earliest of my writing, is a total betrayal of my current ideals. It’s not the majority of what turns me off today: most of that is simply true but poorly phrased, or pointless, cheap, short answers that don’t add anything to anyone. Most of the problematic answers are simply crude, single-sentence statements that don’t mean anything.
But there are things that I would never have written today, and shouldn’t have written back then, things I do not want backed by my name and reputation not just because they were written badly, but because they were wrong. It doesn’t matter they are nowhere near the majority of what needs to be gotten rid of. Even one such answer, even one that barely anyone ever saw, is too much.
I cannot accept this.
And this, above all, is why this account isn’t deleted, even though it would be a convenient and effective way of making sure that my name no longer gives legitimacy to my mistakes. Because I do not simply wish to bury my mistakes quietly and without a word. I wish to disown them. I wish for every one of my followers to know that I have discovered and recognized my failure, that I will correct it, and I will adhere to even stricter standards in the future so that it will not be repeated. Every single answer or comment or other piece of content that I manage to find that does not adhere to the standards I today hold myself to are in the process of deletion or major edits. I fully realize I won’t find everything, especially since there is no easy way to track comments and even if there were it would be a herculean effort. But I will do my best. It will take long, given my busy schedule, but I have already started, and I hereby disown and disavow any past statements made that do not fit my current standards of moral, neutral and accurate scholarship that I do not manage to find and terminate.
The truth, without varnish or embellishment or manipulation. This was my mission. In the distant past, I have failed it severely. I apologize humbly for having done so, and I state firmly that I will not do so again.
I thank you all, for the support you have shown me for so long, the trust you have placed in me, and the journey to more nuanced knowledge that you have helped me on. And I promise to hold myself to ever stricter standards and continue to provide the best within my power to provide. The errors of the distant past will be corrected, and will not be repeated.
Ad astra per aspera.
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· Soviet snipers consistently out-performed their German counterparts in Stalingrad, because for one, the Soviets had had a proper sniper program.
Unlike in World War One, where Germany had been the leading pioneer of dedicated sharpshooters, dedicated snipers did not exist in the Wehrmacht for most of the early Second World War. Only after grim experience at the hands of the Soviets, who had possessed a very capable sniper corps(in fact, the only dedicated sharpshooter corps in the world in the thirties) did the Germans properly adapt, with dedicated training being re-established in 1942.
Come Stalingrad, the German snipers in that urban battle were pretty much the first batch of dedicated snipers Germany put to the field in a long time. Understandably, their performances did not exactly excel.
As time went on, Germans began to improve and perfect their own program, and the products of German sniper training became well able to go toe to toe with their Soviet counterparts, who themselves remained consistently excellent throughout the war.
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Cem—
I have never seen this topic properly addressed before, in the military history literature on WW2 (or WW1, for that matter). That literature is of course vast, and I certainly make no claim to have read all of it—so if its out there, I could easily have just missed it. Can you provide annotation
… (more)You’ll want to take a look at Sepp Allerberger’s memoirs Sniper on the Eastern Front and Peter Senich’s The German Sniper, 1914–1945 for a view of the German side, and for the Soviet side, there’s multiple Soviet snipers who wrote their memoirs such as Lyudmila Pavlichenko. I’ve heard good things on
… (more)And a use of females by Russians
How does that correlate to one's skill as a sniper?
Ragnārs StabiņšThere are many famous Russian female snipers. I would say that plenty of women are more patient and precise than men so they could excel at being snipers. It is really not for everyone, you must have a clear head with inner calm to be able to be a sniper.
Sustainable, as in, ‘could it be kept, militarily’? More likely than not.
Sustainable, as in, was it a sustainable policy as an answer to Germany’s economic woes? Well… the practical economic problem of the German policy of Lebensraum in the East was this: After the Germans took control of all the land, and expelled or just killed some three quarters of the people in it… what the fuck were they going to do with it?
The problem with land is that it’s worth nothing without people in it. Poland had an experience with that sort of thing after the war, when the question was the new acquisition of the German Silesia, now effectively empty after several million inhabitants were expelled by force and more than one million themselves fled beforehand. Just before it was annexed into Poland, Silesia was the most economically prosperous region left of what was then Germany: after the expulsions, the value of the province collapsed. Cities became ghost towns, their population dropping by more than three quarters in the matter of a few years. Resettlement attempts proved miniscule compared to the massive loss of population. Silesia became an economic black hole, and it reached its pre-war population only in the late seventies.
Now, especially after the horrific death toll of the Second World War in Poland, Poland was a way smaller nation than Germany was. But Poland was trying to repopulate territories with a pre-war population of only some six to seven million- Silesia, Farther Pomerania, East Brandenburg and half of East Prussia.
It’s a bit debatable exactly how much the population drop in the ‘Lebensraum’ would be once Generalplan Ost was complete, as its rates and treatments were neither exact nor precise, but a ballpark figure would be… well over one hundred million people expelled or killed from the ‘Lebensraum’ acquisitions.
This is depopulation on a catastrophic scale. And there’s going to be nobody to replace it.
Germans can’t simply do what they tried with Poland and ship in settlers in form of the Volksdeutsche from outside Germany, such as the Volga Germans or the Siebenbürger- there wasn’t enough of those to properly repopulate just Poland, let alone the whole of the European USSR. Furthermore, the Germans of the East were a heavily urbanized population, who didn’t exactly provide Germany with a pool of settlers capable of agricultural work in the expanse of the East. And few Germans in Germany would prefer to lay down their life back home and settle in the distant East, regardless of the lucrativeness of the offer made to them by the state, and even if they were, settling enough Germans from Germany proper to the East would have meant a major depopulation in Germany itself, and only exacerbate the problem.
The fact of the matter was, a Generalplan Ost would have meant massive depopulation in the East that Germany’s resettlement abilities would not have sufficed to replace- an endless drain of money that would not even have returned enough economic gain to pay for itself let alone turn into any long term gain. To wrangle the riches of the East needed people to exploit it: to till the farms, dig the mines, to work the factories. Empty land wouldn’t work itself.
The eastern conquests of a victorious Germany would be sustainable, as in ‘Germany could keep a hold of them’, but it’d be a massive economic drain that could have catastrophic consequences. The economic sustainability of the Eastern conquest was a completely different thing from its military sustainability, and to be able to extricate value from the East would require a massive cutdown in scope of Generalplan Ost at the very least, or, preferably, its complete abandonment.
The final decision on the East was settler colonialism on a scope no nation had ever dared to attempt before. Other than being an incredible atrocity, Generalplan Ost was also a case of extremely unsound economic policy.
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It is always possible that the Plan could have been abandoned or modified. I honestly suspect if a man like Alfred Rosenberg had had his way there would have been more of a campaign to Germanize substantial portions of the native populations. Its also not impossible, like the Americans abandoning th
… (more)I also can’t get anyone to give me a straight answer on who among the Slavs and Balts would qualify for Germanization. I honestly have a strong suspicion that the SS would have been selecting families with the best looking women for Germanization.
Šimon CerovskýSome Czechs and Slovaks were supposed to be Germanized. There was also political stance taken into consideration. Final Solution of the Czech Question - Wikipedia
I think their only (faint) hope of making it work would have been to invade as liberators from the horrors of Stalin and his Soviets. That would have rallied a lot of people to the German side, probably bringing victory. Follow that with “friendly” governments and allow the Germanisation to work ove
… (more)“a ballpark figure would be… well over one hundred million people expelled or killed from the ‘Lebensraum’ acquisitions.”
No. The first draft of the Generalplan-Ost, prepared at the end of 1941 by the RSHA calculated that a bit over 30 million people would need to be relocated from the regions that h
… (more)First off, I have no idea who Inmaculada Martinez is, other than presumably a Spaniard. All I know about her, which I learned in five minutes of research, is that she apparently did make the exact statement, and there isn’t any ‘context’ missing that would indicate she meant something other than what she said. What I am feeling is exasperated resignation.
If you wish to be a pedant, you could make a point that it’s technically true, if you judge that:
- a more sound foreign policy in the interwar era could extricate Poland from its predicament and its fate of being crushed between Germany and Soviet Union with no friends to its name to come to aid it,
- and that a hypothetically speaking German-aligned Poland would have been able to do what Hungary managed to until the country’s occupation by Germany and resist Germany’s will to have its Jewish population relinquished to German authority and thus their lethal fate.
If you believe these two points, both of which are highly debatable, to be true, and for a certain definition of the word ‘allow’, you could technically claim that Poland ‘allowed’ the Nazis to put Jews into ghettos and construct concentration camps, the same way Hindenburg ‘allowed’ the Nazis to do the same by appointing Hitler as Reichskanzler- in either case, you would be making the argument that the actions of an actor(whether Poland or Hindenburg) eventually led to the outcome of the Holocaust even though the actors themselves could not reasonably have been expected to foresee that particular consequence of their actions.
However, if what Inmaculada Martinez meant was the above, ‘allowing an unforeseeable outcome to come to pass by way of actions with no direct and obvious connection to said outcome’, I will eat my own hat. Even ignoring how utterly rare the above viewpoint is in modern discourse, if that was the belief Martinez held, then she could only reach the conclusion that actors cannot be held responsible for the consequences of actions that they could not reasonably have foreseen and thus, her statement would lack the overwhelmingly accusatory tone it carries- for the record, Martinez’s full statement was this:
I don’t think anyone would disagree if I said that this does not read even remotely like ‘Poland, your actions allowed the Holocaust to happen, although you could not have foreseen what your actions would lead to and cannot thus be blamed for it.’
There is this weird idea in the modern world, the origin of which I cannot comprehend, of Poland as some sort of ‘accomplice’ in the Holocaust, complicit in its horrendous crimes. It is indeed true that interwar Poland had a few sketchy skeletons in its closet with regards to its treatment of its Jewish population, and the famous tolerance of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth was left in the books of history when Poland rose from her ashes in the wake of the Great War- especially after Pilsudski’s death and the evaporation of the bulwark he presented to some degree against aggressive ethnonationalism. That, of course, ought not be forgotten.
What Poland most categorically cannot be blamed for, however, is active, national participation in the Holocaust that this particular tweet so shamelessly implies.
Was there any collaboration? Certainly: Germany found collaborators in each and every single nation, without exception, they occupied during the Second World War and quite a few of those that they didn’t even occupy. There were definitely individual Poles who could be indicted of participating in or assisting the Holocaust. But to go from that to claiming that what is possibly the European nation with the lowest ratio of collaboration in the Holocaust or just collaboration with the Germans at all is somehow guilty of ‘allowing the Holocaust’ is such a massive leap that it no longer suffices to rate it a gross exaggeration: it’s much closer to a lie by this point.
Which, I believe, is an accurate enough summary of my opinion of Martinez’s statement, if you haven’t felt like reading all of the above. It’s either grotesquely misinformed, or a bald-faced lie.
I could, certainly, make a list of all the Poles who individually could be indicted of taking part in or just ‘allowing’ the Holocaust. But I could also make a list of all the Poles who, let alone simply not doing so, fought against it even despite the extremely limited means with which to do so and extremely hazardous nature of doing so, and that second list would be considerably larger than the first. There is a very good reason why citizens of Poland by a comfortable margin represent the largest group among the Righteous Among the Nations.
I cannot, in good faith, say anything in favor of Martinez’s statement. I can merely call it grossly misinformed if I’m being generous, a lie if I’m not, and in either case, an absolute insult towards not merely all the Polish citizens who struggled and fought and often died struggling against the Holocaust, but also to Poland as a whole, and the sheer misery inflicted upon it throughout the Second World War, in majority by the very forces it is now being accused of eagerly helping.
But above rage, or disgust, or just contempt of the statement, the most I feel is exasperation. Exasperation, because this kind of nonsense was said before, because it will be said again, and nothing I can say or do will, no matter how much I wish for it to, put a stop to it.
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You are far kinder to that ignorant woman than I would be if I answered this question.
I probably am kinder than I ought to be.
I don’t think this women is ignorant; I think she is worse then that.
Jiri NovacekI think the woman actually does not exist, it seems as pure trolling by someone else.
You didn’t mention her second and third sentences, where she says that… because Poland were complicit in the holocaust, therefore they can’t now say they’re against abortion…? Shouldn’t that be read as anti-abortion logic? Maybe it’s “because Poland were complicit in the holocaust, they no longer ha
… (more)Well, I didn’t discuss her other sentences, because it’s not strictly relevant to the question. The question asks what I think of her accusation of Poland’s complicity in the Holocaust: her further using this in a pro-abortion argument isn’t strictly relevant.
The part I’m asked about is her ‘Poland
… (more)So far, most answers I’ve seen tend to focus on the question of how to best take short rests: how to talk to your GM about it or expect him to handle it, what sort of parties benefit most from frequent short rests, how often you should expect to get a short rest… the like. And those are very good points, and I’m glad to see they were made, but I feel they are missing another vital point.
If you’re playing a warlock in a way you need a short rest after every encounter, you’re probably doing it wrong; and honestly, it’s likely not your fault.
Any DnD player with new exposure to 5e’s warlock class is prone to making this error. Between descriptions of the class both officially and by the fan base, the 5e warlock lends itself easily to the image of the ‘demon wizard’. A quick reading of the class description straight from the Player’s Handbook leaves one with the striking impression of yet another wizard-esque class, except where wizards’ powers derive from intensive study and sorcerers’ are innate, the warlocks derive themselves from Faustian bargains.
Strictly speaking, this isn’t wrong: but it severely misleads you with regards to one critical fact that you need to realize to properly play a warlock.
You are not a caster class.
Yes, yes, I know that strictly speaking, you are an 2/3 caster, and a pretty potent one in terms of spell list and spell power. But I don’t care. You are not a caster class. As a warlock, what you are is a martial class with a really powerful magic bow, and a small number of powerful spell slots to back you up. You aren’t a wizard. You’re an Eldritch Knight.
Most full casters and some of the 2/3 casters will usually play by tossing out whatever spell they find appropriate to the situation, and they will rely on their cantrips when they are out of spells, or when they’re in a situation where their spells would either be ineffective or just a waste. You do not play that way. You are actually a martial class masquerading as a caster: your primary offense is Eldritch Blast just as much as the primary offense of the half-elf ranger is that bow of his. Your spells are for necessities. They are not your primary offense the way they are for the party wizard.
Get in that mindset. Whenever you are about to use one of your spell slots, ask these two questions:
- Do I need to use a spell?
- Do I really need to use a spell?
Advice already given in this thread, concerning how to settle the question of ‘how do I take short rests’, is worth paying an ear to. But this is also important: if you are playing a warlock and are in need of a short rest after every encounter, you are playing your warlock as a caster, and you aren’t one.
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Considering the small number of spell slots and known spells, I’m guessing it’s not recommended for Warlocks to take many utility spells? Unless they’re really useful ones like Fly etc.
The known spells number goes up pretty quickly, so I actually disagree with this. I take one or two a combat ones (or ones that fit with the combat style I designed), then several utility ones, and then additional ones to fill in gaps. But it partly depends on party dynamic. So I have Tongues, Fly,
… (more)Once they start gaining an understanding of what ‘the SS’ was, a lot of people come up with the same question that the OP did: why? What was the point of having an organization like it, with fingers in so many unrelated pies? Some say it was meant as a parallel organization loyal only to Hitler, and that was the raison d’etre that everyone pretended was the case, but it wasn’t the actual reason.
The question is perfectly normal. From a perspective of country policy, the SS had no reason whatsoever to exist. All of its jobs could be partitioned into dozens of specific institutions, and many of them in fact had been taken over from specific institutions. What was the point of the Sicherheitsdienst when the Abwehr was there? Why the Waffen-SS, while the Heer existed? What was the point of giving command of the Geheime Staatspolizei to the SS rather than to the Ministry of the Interior?
An argument is that it was, as mentioned above, meant to be a subsumation of state authorities into a Party organization that was going to be more loyal to Hitler, as the SS liked to pretend. But even that does not hold water. Why should Hitler have expected more loyalty from Himmler leading the SS than from Frick as the Reich Minister of the Interior, himself an ardent Nazi and one of the Alter Kämpfer? This may seem more true concerning organizations which Hitler couldn’t immediately and directly subvert, such as the military, but even then it doesn’t hold water with what actually happened, where Hitler on multiple occasions refused to permit the Waffen-SS the primacy above the army it tried to acquire.
The reality, of course, is that the SS didn’t exist because of matters of state. The SS existed because of questions of internal politics.
April 1934- Göring shakes hands with Himmler, as the former hands over the control of the Geheime Staatspolizei, which he held until now in his capacity as the Minister President of Prussia, to Himmler. After Himmler’s long campaign to take over the police institutions of Germany, until then a matter of individual states, the Prussian police including the Gestapo was the last police organization in Germany to remain outside Himmler’s control: a situation that changed with this handover. Photo from the German federal archives.
As I have previously mentioned, Hitler’s Reich was a structure made up of state institutions that were turned into conflicting fiefdoms, snapping at each other for the Führer’s favour, and it was on this fact that Hitler’s power was secured. In the environment of distrust and competition this system created, its cogs tried their damnedest to concentrate as much power, influence, and responsibility in their hands as possible.
Himmler and the SS’ excuse for their grasping at every different bit of power and responsibility was that they were a force ‘loyal only to Hitler’ who would do these things better and more loyally than whoever it was that used to do them. Their actual reason was to gather as much power in their hands as was possible in the eternal power struggle that was the Reich.
The activities of the SS ranged from running every kind of business(from bakeries to arms factories) to fielding an armed field force to fight in Germany’s wars, from contracting out slave labor to German industries to commanding pretty much the country’s entire internal security apparatus, from administrating the concentration(and later extermination) camp network to managing the affairs of the Germans outside the borders of the Reich.
There was no reason whatsoever for this web of unrelated activities to be under the auspices of a single organization, one with no clearly defined purpose… no reason from a state management perspective, that is. But when you realize the reason was simply an ‘interest group’ grasping at every bit of power it could find regardless of how relevant it was to its other activities, it makes a lot more sense.
It’s why the Waffen-SS, for example, seems so peculiar. It didn’t have a special, unique purpose. Its purpose was to do exactly what the Heer was there to do, except with different uniforms, different names for the same ranks, and a little bit of extra National Socialist indoctrination tossed in. If one is to discount Himmler’s inevitable reaction and the impact on morale owing to those units’ own esprit de corps, if Hitler were to wake up one day and declare all units of the Waffen-SS were now part of the Heer, nothing would have changed.
The SS had so many branches, because like every major power player in the Reich, it was grasping at every scrap of power it could get its hands on.
Great answer. To me it begs the question: if the SS ended up with its fingers in every pie in the country, just because Himmler grabbed every job he could, how did they get started? If they had no raison d'etre, no unique core duties, why were they brought into being in the first place?
It started out as a small bodyguard detachment meant to provide personal security to Hitler and other Party members of importance.
For about four years, it remained so. Then Himmler took over, and started leveraging the SS’ ‘personally loyal to Hitler’ credentials for every bit of influence. In the f
… (more)Jesse KempfIndeed, the SS as an organization can not be understood except as a manifestation of Heinrich Himmler’s personality and psychological problems. A subtle point that I’ve seen many people get wrong, though, is that the almost cartoonish degrees of infighting and backstabbing amongst Nazis is flattened just to the upper levels of the Reich surrounding Hitler and then it’s attributed to Hitler carefully playing men and different factions off each other — but the trouble is it’s not true on three fronts. On the first, much effort in the 20th Century was spent by ex-Nazis on passing the buck on their own crimes, which they did willingly or eagerly, to a dead man. Hence the “Hitler as cynical master manipulator” conception of the man, but as near as we can tell he absolutely _was_ a Nazi, and he was bringing people along with him into his realm of ultra-right wing fantasy. On the second, considered and sustained investment in war preparations wasn’t something Hitler did either, despite knowing in 1933 his intent to start the war by 1945. Instead what we see is month-to-month thrashing of priorities, where in March 1936 or whatever the shipyard at Kiel gets _all_ the steel in Germany, and in April it goes to someone else. The third is, quite simply, the backstabbing and intrigue existed at every level and was encouraged. Between these three things what we see isn’t the pattern of the schemer, but the pattern of the gambler. Nazism’s first and foremost value and conception, the essence of its weltanschauung , before the omnicidal racism, before the schoolboy military fantasy of huge tanks and huge ships and wonder weapons, is Social Darwinism. Everything else is flavoring, while Social Darwinism is the beef. The idea of “survival of the fittest” (read: most ruthless and conniving) is the essence of their positive political program — hence Bunker Hitler’s insistence that Germany be destroyed.
“Game of Thrones National Socialistic edition”
What amazes me is how they still kept the game after Bagration and Normandy…
The leadership had no choice. They knew they were dead men, and their only hope was that if they hung on long enough, the “unnatural” alliance between the Anglo-Americans and Soviets would fall apart and the Anglo-Americans would either make a separate peace or join the Nazis to save Europe from Sov
… (more)Because they are stupid.
They didn’t even kick in a full war hearing until Albert Speertk over
Matti LaihoAs Jesse Kempf in his comment says, the nazis had a pattern of gambling in their actions, and just like their rise to power, the decision to keep going whatever happened was high risk-high reward. Of course if the expected value is negative as arguably is the case here, a gambler may be considered stupid. I do wonder though, would surrendering after Bagration or Normandy been notably better for high up Nazis?
The ‘catch’, in so far as fascism’s economic policies(as these are the ones discussed in the question, we will not touch on fascism’s social, political, or diplomatic beliefs) is the same kind of catch that is in every political ideology.
It is entirely sound in theory- the way dozens of economic policies are. Fundamentally, economics is a complex science, and its problems are not singularly solved: it’s why the world has given rise to such a wide spectrum of economic theories that have worked under different circumstances. The catch with ‘corporatism’ is the question: do you trust those in charge of doing it to do it properly?
Fundamentally, fascist corporatism divides the economic world into ‘interest groups’ that represent their respective fields, and the three respective interests in those fields: the workers, the employers, and the state. In that regard, it’s a bit of a modern take on the Medieval system of craftsmen’s guilds, mixed in with a measure of state-run capitalism. In theory, under the auspices of the State looking out for the interests of the employers and the workers both, the system should work like clockwork.
The catch, is that as with many economic systems, there’s numerous potential points of failure in it. Nothing strictly stops the government from overwhelmingly favoring one edge of the theoretical triangle and marginalizing the other, the system serving only to throw scraps at the losing side: turning the whole thing to either Soviet-style collectivism with a veil of corporatism over it(if the employers are being squashed between the state and the workers), or to a loosely-regulated, cutthroat free market economy where the alleged role of protecting the workers from exploitation has long vanished(if the workers are being crushed by the state and the employers).
Or, even if the originally intended balance holds out, the consolidation of economic interests into a small number of powerful syndicates might create a fertile breeding ground for major power conflicts that undermine the government- or, on the other side, may lead to the government utilizing its power over the syndicates to empower political loyalty over the supposed job of the syndicates to be effective and fair managers of the national economy.
Or, the system might just run into the potential downfall of state-run economies: the system may evolve into state-enforced sectoral monopolies, leading to a stifling of competition and the myriad of harmful results borne out of this.
The ‘catch’ of corporatism, or of most of the human economic models for that matter, isn’t some big gaping hole in its logic that’s just well hidden by all its proponents hoping you don’t see it. Even communism, generally rightly considered a thoroughly failed economic policy, has its situational uses: it is very effective in managing a national crisis and rapid nation-building, even though not sustainable once the crisis is dealt with. The ‘catch’ isn’t that corporatism is a completely unworkable or ineffective way to run an economy: various takes on corporatism has been attempted by many fascist and non-fascist ideologies, and the sheer muscle of the Chinese economy, itself run under a variation of the corporatist model, should indicate that it indeed can work.
As an economic policy, corporatism can work. The catch is, like many economic policies, is that it doesn’t work everywhere, for everyone, in all circumstances, and even when all conditions are met, it still won’t work if not run properly.
Theories almost always sound great. Even the most unworkable economic ideas that ever exist sound like they’ll work on paper. The problem, of course, comes when you need to carry it out in real life, and thus, have to deal with flawed systems and flawed people.
What makes Economics complex is the economic alchemy that is peddled as Economics.
The reason why all these ideas of how to structure society top-down lead to inferior outcomes is because of the bedrock economic law that value is subjective! This is what Cem is getting at when he says “The catch is,
… (more)The reason China “works" is because they must export, and, when one needs to be globally competitive, one must not ignore the laws of market competition. Thus, not even big state owned companies are necessarily free from obeying market laws, where in other places these companies have primarily polit
… (more)They do not have to export: They have the largest population in the world! Their rulers are engaging in grand scale export mercantilism, which is preventing a middle class from rising in China, stifling growth. I am certainly not defending the Chinese government when I say that their central plannin
… (more)Pretty much fantasy world.
No small amount of prisoners of war were employed by Manstein’s commands in Crimea and in the region of the Dnieper for labor of a military nature- unpaid, as was often the case for German forced laborers. Although, for the most part, the atrocities of the Eleventh Army and Army Group Don/Army Group South troops didn’t originate from Manstein, he did very little to prevent them, even where he was aware, nor did he take any serious steps to stop the Einsatzgruppen from operating. He personally made little distinction in orders concerning prisoners of war with regards to their ethnic identity, and it wouldn’t have been his job to arrange any ethnic segregation of the prisoners of war his forces captured nor to deal with their administration, but his forces’ treatment of prisoners of war could best be described as pretty characteristic of the Eastern Front(where more than a third of all German and more than half of all Soviet prisoners of war did not survive their imprisonment).
As of plotting to remove Hitler, this can be most categorically rejected- for not only he never planned such a thing, when those who did brought their plans to his attention, although he kept the secrets of his fellow officers, he rejected to take any part in it whatsoever, with his somewhat iconic statement that ‘Prussian field marshals do not mutiny.’
The one statement with some merit to it is ‘fighting alongside his troops’. Of course, spending most of the Second World War either as an Army Group staff officer or as an army or army group commander, Manstein didn’t exactly see a lot of fighting- indeed, if an officer of that high rank was fighting, it would mean someting had gone severely wrong. Field marshals are supposed to command, not shoot. On the other hand, he did spend a lot of time at the front, in accordance with the German officer’s axiom that an officer need be very familiar with the situation at the front and the circumstances of his soldiers. Often, Manstein could be found inspecting positions and talking to men in very forward positions, talking to the men or reviewing their circumstances.
That exception set aside, none of the other qualities ascribed to Manstein here are true, and not even he claimed it was true and Manstein claimed a not insignificant amount of things that weren’t true in his effort to manage not merely his own defence and reputation, but the very reputation of the Wehrmacht.
Erich von Manstein is regarded, rightfully so, as one of the most capable operational minds of his century. In a victorious army, he’d have gone down in history as the Napoleon of the twentieth century. However, in him one will not find a saint, a noble and righteous man who conducted his own war with the utmost integrity and one who can clearly and certainly say his hands are clean.
The Second World War gave us very few such people, and Manstein is not one of them. He is, and will remain, a great example of an exceptionally capable officer: but he who seeks a moral example to follow, best look elsewhere.
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Agree completely. There were several Fuhrer directives issued to Eastern front commanders –– Manstein among them –– that outlined clearly the war to follow with the Soviet Union was a war of extermination.
That the Germans could slaughter somewhere between three and 4 million Russian POWs and never b
… (more)Indeed, the Germans received a good amount of good luck from much more moral men than Manstein.
Had some of the allies got their way we wouldn’t have a modern Germany, nor a good side of the war.
or maybe it’s not a myth ..or at least no more then some others combatants
ANTI WEHRMACHT EXHIBITION Propaganda With Pictures: The Anti-Wehrmacht Exhibition
Since 1995 a traveling exhibition has been moving through Germany and Austria professing to show the crimes of the Wehrmacht, primarily by means
… (more)Michael HuttonI’m going to focus my answer on your opening sentence: “or maybe it’s not a myth ..or at least no more than some others combatants.” Before addressing the rest of your points, I want to reread carefully. I may be misreading your intent; but, what I see is an attempt to rewrite history to cover-up war crimes the Wehrmacht committed as a matter of course, deliberate in design and committed wholesale and enthusiastically. The idea of a “clean”’Wehrmacht is a myth. It’s the fictitious notion that the Wehrmacht was not involved in war crimes. To imply that the Wehrmacht handled itself honorably or no worse than other armies (except maybe the Soviets) during World War II is an assertion meant to hide the atrocities and horrifying actions — especially in the East — that the German army undertook by design and with the full approval and acceptance of the civilian and military leadership. The Germans weren’t late to this game. During the invasion of Poland, the Ciepielów massacre was one of the largest and best documented war crimes in the early days of the war, where the 15th MIR, 29th Motorized Infantry Division under the command of Colonel Walter Wessel murdered 300 prisoners. The slaughter of combatants and noncombatants was the official policy of the Wehrmacht in the East. It was an all-encompassing effort, requiring detailed coordination and planning between the military and the government. The government of Nazi Germany, the Armed Forces High Command (OKW) and the Army High Command (OKH) jointly laid the foundations for genocide in the Soviet Union. From the outset, the invasion of the Soviet Union was designed as a war of annihilation. German commanders throughout all theaters of operations accepted and supported these atrocities as long as they didn’t affect the morale and functioning of the units in combat. Our view of history changes over time, which can result in greater clarity of the past or it can obscure events in order to hide from the consequences. Asserting a “clean” Wehrmacht is intended to obscure and hide from the judgement of history. The Germans were nothing if not methodical and they codified with Fuhrer Directives how the war would be fought. These instructions were directives to commit murder. Upwards of 4 million murdered Soviet POWs makes sense when we understand the “legal” structure the Germans implemented in the east in fighting the Soviets. Let’s start with these four. Institutionalized slaughter of non-combatants was the heart and soul of Wehrmacht operations in the east. They were clear in their intent and documented it nicely for it to be reviewed and assessed in the decades after the war. Trent Park and the Germans in their own words. We have additional confirmation from conversations that captured Wehrmacht commanders had amongst themselves while being held as POWs by the British. Thanks to a clever trick the British pulled off, we know the extent to which German knew about and collaborated in war crimes, particularly on the Eastern front. The Brits conducted a massive clandestine operation where they secretly recorded more than 64,000 conversations between captured generals and other senior officers, all without their knowledge, indeed without their ever suspecting anything. These explain what the German high command privately thought of the war, Hitler, the Nazis, and each other. They also comprehensively explode the post-war claim of senior Wehrmacht officers that they did not know what was happening to the Jews, Slavs, gypsies, mentally disabled and other so-called untermenschen, crimes which they exclusively blamed on the SS. They knew and they participated and as they were being surreptitiously monitored they even discussed among themselves their fears of what would happen to them once the war was over and the world discovered what they had done. There would have been a greater accounting of these butchers were it not for the fact that the West needed Germany back on its feet to help confront the Soviet threat. The evidence for these recordings show that the Wehrmacht officer corps fought on with such resilience even after the war seemed certainly lost, not just out of the soldierly virtues of loyalty and obedience, but because they hoped against hope to escape judicial retribution afterwards. Their protests of honorable behavior are unequivocally destroyed with these transcripts. German soldiers knew that a full accounting of the atrocities they committed willfully and deliberately would have repercussions. They marshalled every lie in their power to ensure that did not happen. The Germans did an excellent job at covering up their crimes. To pretend they did not have blood on their hands from murdered prisoners of war, Jews or civilians is revisionism of the worst sort. I’ll stop here for now. I want to re-read and think about the rest of your assessment and ensure that I understand what you're saying before I post additional comments. I will add, though, no amount of critical analysis can erase the enormity of the butchery the Wehrmacht willing inflicted on eastern Europe, the Soviet Union and to a lesser degree Western Europe.
Fought alongside his troops… Definitely not WWII, but I will look at his WWI, it would seem that he saw plenty of direct action against both Belgians and Russians then.
Yes. He fought in Belgium, and the taking of Namur, before being sent East where he fought until the tail end of 1914, where he was shot twice in action and spent months in a hospital.
Afterwards, he served in various staff officer positions.
Because the fact that the Luftwaffe couldn’t do it wasn’t that obvious.
The inability of the German air force to supply the Stalingrad pocket wasn’t on behalf of any institutional, structural inability of the Luftwaffe. It wasn’t that Luftwaffe, as an organization, didn’t have the air power or know-how for such an operation. Indeed, mere weeks after Paulus’ surrender in Stalingrad, the Luftwaffe would go on to prove that it indeed could do that with the nearly two month airbridge to the Gotenkopfstellung, on the Taman Peninsula where the 17. Armee had withdrawn. At the peak of the air resupply to the peninsula, Germans flew in seven hundred tons of supply every day to the 17. Armee.
The problem with Stalingrad wasn’t that the theoretical situation of an air supply operation of that size was beyond the abilities of the Luftwaffe, but the situation on the ground, circumstances specific to that particular airlift, that complicated the matters. At the Taman Peninsula as well as the Demyansk airbridge early in 1942, German aircraft had had access to multiple notable airfields that could be used to land supplies to and pick up wounded from, and relatively lacking Soviet resistance in the air or by way of ground fire, and had flown relatively short distances. At Stalingrad, German resupply aircraft had to fly a longer distance than in either of those two operations, with a massive increase in both the amount and effectiveness of the Soviet ground fire. Furthermore, neither inside the pocket nor outside in the staging areas of the air resupply did the Germans have access to as robust and as developed airfields as they did in either of the above cases, and what they did have was continuously threatened by the Soviet advance- forcing hasty evacuations, even longer distances for the flight, and aircraft losses on the ground.
On paper, it should’ve been possible to supply Stalingrad from the air with ease: Germans certainly had enough aircraft for the job. But between distance, lack of facilities, and the constant Soviet advance, the paper did not reflect the situation in reality.
Hitler consistently showed a very retentive memory concerning the numbers of warfare and a very strong grasp of the capabilities of the military forces and equipment- at least in theory. If the fact that Luftwaffe wouldn’t be able to supply Stalingrad was simply due to a total lack of such airlift capacity, neither Göring, nor Hitler, nor Jeschonnek would have made that error.
However, neither Hitler nor the Luftwaffe high command could, naturally, be aware of the circumstances at the frontline except by way of reports from their subordinates. Himself not aware of the situation, Jeschonnek, the Luftwaffe Chief of Staff and the originator of the idea, had so readily considered it doable for that reason, and told Hitler so.
However, soon after, Jeschonnek took the chance to phone Richthofen in the frontline and be informed as to exactly how far-fetched the resupply attempt was. By that point, however, Hitler was already convinced of the feasibility of the airlift, and Jeschonnek was able to convince neither Hitler nor his own superior Göring.
Luftwaffe had the ‘maximum’ transport capacity to supply the Sixth Army: it was the circumstances and vigorous Soviet action prevented that capability from being utilized.
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Distance and access were definitely acute problems, but we cannot ignore some institutional hubris of the high command and Hitler himself. They all knew the 6th had to remain in place for the greater strategy. I agree tho, the Luftwaffe capacity was there for supply to maintain adaquate levels of “s
… (more)I would posit a slightly lesser interpretation than the High Command deciding that the Sixth was doomed.
Strictly speaking, it is entirely true that the Sixth Army *had* to stay in Stalingrad. Deprived of most of its transport as its rear area was overrun during Uranus, the Sixth could break out only
… (more)Will Coleman“It's difficult to know where Hitler himself stood between these two schools of thought, as many conflicting narratives have been offered..” This answer is certainly something that has perplexed Stalingrad historians for generations. I think the less honest of those historians have always maintained Hitler was some madman descending into the great wilds (case blue) that doomed him and his army. Hogwash! He knew exactly what was happening to him and his armies on the eastern front. At Stalingrad, he made informed decisions, albeit ones that in hindsight created problems, but informed none the less. The airlift was just one of them, and he had all the available data and capacities to make those decisions. As we’ve both commented, Hitler also knew that leaving his entire southern flank open would invite disaster, and I believe made the correct strategic decision to save more of his army than what was trapped in Stalingrad.
Finally the airlift story makes sense as well. Thank you Cem. We can reach information in this age but processing it reasonably is often beyond reach.
Now, Göring was an exceptionally smart and astute man- one difficult to best in a verbal argument, and one who had devoted all his conversational talents into his goal of making a mockery of the trials.
But still, I can’t help but think that the end result was less due to Göring’s admittably incisive answers, and more just how ineptly Jackson handled the cross-examination. There is one certain incident that happened, near the end of the eighty-fifth day of the proceedings, that illustrate the circumstances very well.
There, the prosecution presented a document, the minutiae of a meeting from June 1935, against Göring’s testimony that the remilitarization of the Rhineland was only planned a few weeks in advance. The relevant quote from the document was as follows:
The demilitarized zone requires special treatment. In his speech of 21 May 1935 and in other statements, the Fuehrer and Reich Chancellor declared that the stipulations of the Versailles Treaty and the Locarno Pact regarding the demilitarized zone would be observed.
Since at present international entanglements must be avoided under all circumstances, all urgently needed preparations may be made. The preparations as such, or their planiling, must be kept in strictest secrecy in the zone itself as well as in the rest of the Reich.
These preparations include in particular: […]
[…] c) Preparation for the liberation of the Rhine.
Göring proceeded to contend that there was an error- that the document was mistranslated, and the original German referred to the clearing of the Rhine- that is, the clearing of the river from civilian transport and its being opened for military and industrial transport in the event of war, as part of a mobilization plan.
Then, the following dialogue occurred:
Goering: That, if you remember, I stressed clearly in my statement, that in the demilitarized zone general preparations for mobilization were made. I mentioned the purchase of horses, et cetera. I wanted only to point out the mistake regarding "clearing of the Rhine," which has nothing to do with the Rhineland, but only with the river.
MR. JUSTICE JACKSON: Well, those preparations were preparations for armed occupation of the Rhineland, were they not?
Goering: No, that is altogether wrong. If Germany had become involved in a war, no matter from which side, let us assume from the East, then mobilization measures would have had to be carried out for security reasons throughout the Reich, in this event even in the demilitarized Rhineland; but not for the purpose of occupation, of liberating the Rhineland.
MR. JUSTICE JACKSON: You mean the preparations were not military preparations?
Goering: Those were general preparations for mobilization, such as every country makes, and not for the purpose of the occupation of the Rhineland.
MR. JUSTICE JACKSON: But were of a character which had to be kept entirely secret from foreign powers?
Goering: I do not think I can recall reading beforehand the publication of the mobilization preparations of the United States.
Now, this, is a blow to Jackson. Make no mistake: this was a grave error on behalf of the prosecution- to effectively ask Göring why his country’s wartime mobilization plans were a state secret. But this isn’t the part that illustrates how badly Jackson handled the examination. This is just the set-up.
Although it’s unequivocally an error, and one that made him look very bad, Jackson’s error can be understood here. He trusted his document, and not Göring, understandably- thus, when Göring contended that there was a mistranslation, Jackson likely believed it was him trying to worm his way out of the accusation on semantics, and tried to pin him down. He did it badly, with that final question, but one can entirely understand where he erred. Even the best prosecutors make mistakes.
The difference between Jackson and a prosecutor up to his task, however, was revealed here. A prosecutor suitable at this job would simply realize, at this point, that this particular line of inquiry had turned into a victory for the defense, and gracefully drop it. It’s not like anyone could blame Jackson for making it- it’s not like he spoke German. It wasn’t him who mistranslated the document in question.
Had Jackson simply said, ‘I understand,’ after Göring’s cheeky reply and moved on to the next topic, Göring’s retort would’ve simply been a witty and incisive slap in the prosecution’s face. But Jackson didn’t concede the point. Instead, he threw the prosecutor’s equivalent of a temper tantrum.
Instead of simply moving on to the next agenda, he appealed to the presiding judge of the trials, in the middle of the court room, to effectively forbid Göring from making any answer that wasn’t ‘Yes’ or ‘No’- a direct revocation of the established rules of the Tribunal, which gave witnesses the right to short and brief explanations concerning their answers. The entire request was so ridiculous that even the President of the court subtly implied to Jackson that maybe he was reading far too much into Göring’s tongue-in-cheek remark and it’d be wiser for him to ignore it… only for Jackson to completely ignore it and press the point until the court ruled that no, Göring wasn’t going to be forbidden from properly answering in a cross-examination.
It is often stated that Jackson wasn’t a great prosecutor in the first place, and he was nowhere near prepared enough for the trial- the latter, admittedly, is a charge that can be levied at many prosecutions in the post-WW2 trials. But what truly torpedoed Jackson’s cross-examination wasn’t just that he didn’t have the wit and talent to clash with Göring or that he hadn’t done enough prep-work to nail Göring despite all his verbal talent. His true problem was he did not have anywhere near the mental preparation he’d have needed to fight: Jackson came to the courtroom expecting an open-and shut. He did not expect in the slightest that Göring would fight back, and when Göring did fight back, he lost control rapidly, handled the examination with even greater ineptitude, which then allowed Göring to play him like a fiddle even more- a cycle that eventually culminated in his hilarious temper tantrum.
The difference stemmed from this fact. Sir Maxwell-Fyfe didn’t just handle the cross-examination with a much greater degree of competence- but also a much cooler head. He went in, expecting a fight, he got a fight, and when he got it he wasn’t discouraged, nor did he panic. He conceded the point where he erred, he ignored biting remarks where they didn’t need to be addressed, and he pressed doggedly onwards.
When Göring objected to Maxwell-Fyfe referring to Himmler as ‘your friend Himmler’, an objection that likely would’ve sent Jackson on a tirade about the irrelevance of Göring’s objection or see him trying to force Göring to admit that the two were indeed friends, Maxwell-Fyfe simply stated that if Göring liked he’d refer to him as ‘your enemy Himmler’ and continued. Above all, that attitude made the most difference. Maxwell-Fyfe, and Roman Rudenko, the Soviet prosecutor, came expecting and willing to fight. And they fought.
Maxwell-Fyfe and Rudenko fought, and secured their conviction, and made some repair of the mess Jackson had left them. Göring achieved his aim of making a mockery of the trial, and laughed all the way to his death as he bit down on a capsule of cyanide, denying the Allies his body on the gallows. The only loser of the Göring trial, in the end, was Robert Jackson, who went down in history with his name under the utterly dismal cross-examination.
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I wonder why did Allies insist on ridding Goering of his opiate addiction before the trial, just who the hell thought that Goering at the peak of his mental capacity is a better prospect than drugged Goering?
Fear he’d die of his fairly terrible health? Or maybe they just didn’t want to provide to a captured prisoner a special ‘luxury’.
Maybe they thought withdrawal would be harder on him than it was?
Chris SimmsThis. The allies would have had doctors who would have known exactly how hard withdrawal is on the body and mind (the lack of sleep, the stomach cramps etc) and for just how long withdrawal lasts. Whereas a long term opiate user taking the same dose every day will feel very different to how the average person feels. Opiates in long term users do not cause any real noticeable loss of mental capacity. Withdrawals, and PAWS, however, cause anxiety, severe sleep deprivation, and stomach pain often for months to the point of driving people almost insane.
An absolutely text book example of how not to cross examine a hostile and intelligent witness. Two short points sum it up,
1.If you find yourself in a hole - stop digging! Even if you have to concede that you have made a bad point, take that on the chin and move on.
2. Don’t let the witness get you ra
… (more)Not the Gestapo- not because the job wasn’t important enough, but because it wasn’t the Gestapo’s job.
The abbreviation ‘Gestapo’ stands for Geheime Staatspolizei: Secret State Police, and before the Nazi takeover and reorganization, it was the Prussian Secret Police. And fundamentally, the Gestapo was a political police organization. It dealt with crimes inherently of a political nature(such as many forms of political opposition that the Hitler regime criminalized), or other criminal acts that were believed to have political motivations or reasons.
If the petty burglar in the question happened to burgle the house of, say, the local Kreisleiter, that might’ve drawn the attention of the Gestapo as a potentially political crime: however, for the most part, petty crimes were the area of the Ordnungspolizei.
However, although the matter was left to an organization isn’t in popular memory remembered as ill as the Geheime Staatspolizei, that didn’t mean the German reaction to petty crime wasn’t harsh. As early as 1920, the 25 Point Program had called for the death sentence for common criminals as part of the NSDAP’s aims.
The 25 Point Program was often ignored thirteen years later when the Party came to power, but its content still delivers valuable insight as of the ideals of its authors. Petty crime was cracked down on ruthlessly by the Nazi regime, and in many cases death sentences or terms in concentration camps were expected.
Of course, this often excluded anyone with a high enough position(or friends in a high enough position) in the NSDAP.
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“Of course, this often excluded anyone with a high enough position(or friends in a high enough position) in the NSDAP.”
As Dirlewanger perfectly demonstrated…(He was friends with the head of the SS Central Office(HA): Gottlob Berger)
Yes- and what Berger got him out of wasn’t ‘petty crime’. It was two convictions for raping a child and half a dozen other things.
Bryan RobertsonNot to mention a stint in one of the concentration camps..
And those petty criminals and low-life thugs were a great reservoir of “workforce” for the camps, where they usually ended up in the position of Kapo, and harassed the Jewish, Slavic and/or communist general population of the camps with a zeal that allowed to post fewer SS guards there.
Oh no. Definitely not.
Make no mistake: Romania made up a significant amount of Germany’s oil supplies. Despite the decrease in Romanian annual crude oil output by about one million tons from 1938 to 1941, Romanian exports to Germany radically increased during this time. At the peak of its oil export in 1941, Romania was exporting three quarters of her annual production of oil, with three quarters of that export going to Germany and most of the rest to Italy.
But it wouldn’t suffice on its own. 1941 German oil imports from all countries(which by that point basically amounted to imports from Hungary and Romania) amounted to about half of the import pre-war: the difference had to be made out. Even if Germany received every drop of Romanian crude wholesale, it would not suffice to meet the demands of the German war machine.
The shortfall, then, was made up with two methods.
The wartime thirst for fuel saw ruthless exploitation of the meager oil fields in Germany proper, as well as those in occupied territories. Compared to their 1938 output, German oil fields tripled in output by 1941- quadrupled if one adds the output from oil fields in occupied territories. But even that amounted to a relatively meager 1.5 million tons in 1941- just over half of the Romanian imports.
Synthetic fuel was the savior. German synthetic fuel production rose from 1.6 million tons a year in 1938 to a staggering 5.7 million tons a year at its peak in 1943. This represented more than half of the German oil supply, and it kept expanding; with the Reich Ministry of Armaments and War Production predictions seeing a 1944 synthetic fuel output just over seven million tons.
Then came the oil campaign. Throughout 1944, Allied air attacks finally stopped its single-minded focus on terror bombings of German cities and expanded into trying to cripple the German war economy through more effective means: means which included major attacks on German oil supply. Across Europe, major air attacks targeted refineries, oilfields, depots and synthetic fuel plants. Domestic and occupied production of crude oil fell by four hundred tons a year, and synthetic fuel production and crude oil imports both fell by about 1.8 million tons each.
Germany, having entered 1944 with expectations of an about 1.5 million tons of increase in annual oil supply, was suddenly faced with a yearly drop in output of four million tons. The consequences were swift and severe.
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“Bombs strategic resources instead of mercilessly slaughtering civilians.
Wins”
Bomber Harris:
surprised Pikachu face.
Harris: *plan to bomb everything to rubble and kill hundreds of thousands of people to encourage Germans to surrender*
Germans: *hate the Allies even more and fight with even more determination*
Harris: surprised Pikachu face
Niko NištaLike, it’s a forgivable offense if you’re the first one to try and terrorize the enemy’s civilian population. But after you’ve seen the Japanese try and fail to use brutality against civilians to make their enemy surrender, despite being the f@cking Japanese, after you yourself have your civilians bombed and don’t surrender… You gotta ask what this guy was thinking.
Do you have any numbers on their pre-war fuel reserves, and how fast they burned through those?
The very opposite: Hitler was very good at knowing hard numbers: he had a keen interest in the war economy and industry, and an exceptional, almost eidetic memory. He could tell you long lists of exact figures from both German and estimated enemy military production, or go off on a long tangent about the specifications and capabilities of various weapon systems.
What Hitler lacked in his understanding of warfare wasn’t a knowledge that his armies were finite, unlike how they seemed in German newsreels. It wasn’t a lack of basic, sound operational grasp, either. What Hitler lacked was the real experience and extensive training in military operations that allows one to judge what is necessary in pursuit of a sound operational aim: Hitler could consistently come up with sound operational ideas and spot openings and chances where they existed, but he did not have a professional’s grasp on exactly what degree of effort was a necessity in the exploitation of said openings and realization of said ideas.
And when to his lack of expertise in that regard was added his belief in the innate supremacy of German arms and, even more importantly, his fanatical belief in the power of ‘will to victory’ while disregarding that the enemy, indeed, could too have a comparable will, Hitler often underestimated the amount of military force necessary to achieve any given aim. As a result, he demanded things of his armies that were beyond their power to achieve, and tried to achieve everything, with forces insufficient to do so.
And as with anyone in war who tries to hold on to everything, he ended up holding on to nothing at all.
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I think a big part of “hold at all costs” was the need for oil. He needed to win in the east, and take the oil, or else he was doomed. Every inch of ground lost was a step away from this goal.
Also, a counterexample to your theory would be the fact that it was Hitler who issued the infamous halt orde
… (more)I’d disagree, assuming you’re referring to the ‘halt order’ of August, in the aftermath of Smolensk.
I wouldn’t say that the German flanks after Smolensk were as weak as they seemed. For one, although it would have left a long flank along AG Center’s south, the forces that would’ve been able to explo
… (more)He also was well aware of casualty numbers and the effect it would have on both the moral of soldiers and the public. Which is why he shutdown all large scale airborne operations after Crete.
To answer this question, we first need to delve into the laws of war on the subject.
The 1907 Hague Conventions forbid ‘improper’ use of an enemy’s symbols and uniforms: what is ‘improper use’, however, is not explained in the Convention. At the time of Unternehmen Greif, this ‘impropriety’ was defined mostly through past precedent and common consensus.
Said consensus drew a line between the usage of enemy uniforms in combat, and using them not in combat but for any other ruse of war. Using enemy uniforms in combat was a war crime, and could later be prosecuted as such. Using them for another ruse of war, however, wasn’t strictly a war crime: you couldn’t do such a thing as capturing a commando six months after an operation he had done with enemy uniforms and try him as a war criminal for having done so. However, if you caught him in foreign uniforms, during such a ruse of war, the captured prisoner was subject to treatment not as a PoW but as a spy. Thus, he could be tried, and executed.
The commandos engaged in Greif were under strict orders to, and almost always(save a pair of isolated incidents) did, switch out of their American disguises prior to engaging in direct combat. Thus, the Americans, legally, could execute any they captured in American uniforms, but they couldn’t later execute any who had taken part in Greif for having done so.
Of the forty-four undercover commandos sent, the Americans captured and executed fourteen. The chaos sown by Greif makes it difficult to dig out whether they were captured wearing American uniforms, but this would have been most likely: that being the case, it can be reliably assumed that most, if not all, of the fourteen executed commandos of Unternehmen Greif were executed legally and expectedly. Throughout the war, usage of enemy uniforms for deception was a legitimate ruse of war, but if you were caught doing it, you were tried, and likely executed, as a spy.
It is worth noting that Skorzeny himself and nine other officers participating in Greif were on trial in 1947 for alleged involvement in the Malmedy massacre and for ‘Participating in the improper use of U.S. uniforms and treacherously firing upon and killing members of the armed forces of the United States’. However, with no evidence that there had been any orders to actually engage in combat while in disguise, and a veteran SOE officer being a defense witness pointing out the regular Allied use of the same ruse of war, all ten defendants were acquitted.
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Perfect answer.
You didn’t die in the earthquake, thank goodness.
Also, good answer.
Well, I literally live half the country away from the earthquake, so there’s that.
I’m terribly sorry about those with the ill fortune to live where it happened, though.
Heinrici’s wife Gertrude was Mischling ersten Grades, a half-Jew who didn’t meet several special criteria that would make such a person considered a full-blooded Jew.
As a mischling, Gertrude and her children(Who were a quarter Jewish, and thus Mischling zweiten Grades) were Reich citizens, and possessed rights denied to people classified as full-blooded Jews. Nevertheless, under the Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honour of 1935, which had banned German-Jewish marriages, a marriage between a full-blooded German and a first degree Mischling would require special authorization, of the kind rarely granted in practice.
Heinrici and his wife had been married by over a decade by the time that law went into effect, and thus, such a permission wasn’t necessary.
Nevertheless, old marriages with people of insufficient racial purity by Nazi standards were still discouraged, and being in that sort of marriage didn’t make Heinrici particularly popular among ardent Nazi ideologues: however, a devout Christian and persistently distasteful of politics, he was already unpopular to begin with.
Marriage with a full-blooded German wouldn’t necessarily protect Gertrude, nor would her children be fully safe: although their conditions were incomparably better than Jews, the mischlinge had their own worries, and could themselves be target of discrimination and disregard. In that regard, where Heinrici’s status as a full-blooded German wouldn’t suffice, it was the status of a Wehrmacht officer that helped him: not long after the Nuremberg Laws, Heinrici got from Hitler a Deutschblütigkeitserklärung, a certificate given to a mischling declaring them as full-blooded Germans, for his wife and two more for his children.
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Good to see you posting again CEM. As always, sound stuff.
Wer Jude ist, bestimme ich.
That alone should discredit nazism to any thinking person.
I don’t see a problem here. The ways this will resolve are as follows:
- The orcs surrender.
- The orcs tighten their Honorable Stupid belts and all starve to death.
- At any point before their starvation, the orcs assault to break out of the cave. They either succeed and get out, or they fail and they’re back where they started.
- They try to come to some sort of terms for the safety of non-combatants in exchange of surrender. How successful this will be depends on your party alignment.
- They try to find another way out of the cave, such as digging out the other side if they have the time, and try to slip the trap.
- Someone allied with the orcs or enemies of the party come in to break the ‘siege’.
But-but they have non-combatants!
And?
Considering you’re calling them a warband, it’s quite obvious that this group of orcs have banded together for a military purpose. It’s not a tribe on the move, it’s an army. And while the lives of non-combatants are inviolate in war(though that is a moral code that is still several centuries from being a thing during the time period most D&D games are inspired from), non-combatant deaths from collateral damage isn’t the fault of your enemy if you brought non-combatants mixed in with your army.
This is perfectly analogous to a besieged city, when the besieging force is not willing to assault the city walls and is content to let the city starve. Besieging cities isn’t seen as particularly amoral, is it?
What the party is doing is a siege by starvation: as typical a military tactic as has ever existed. It’s unfortunate that there are non-combatants stuck there, but as things stand now, the onus of the moral dilemma isn’t on the players, but on the orcs: they’ve made the mistake of bringing non-combatants to the field of battle, and now the lives of those non-combatants is in their hands.
If you’d like to place the moral dilemma back on your players, however, the solution is to suggest a diplomatic compromise. For example, if the orcs were to suggest a deal, where the warriors would surrender in exchange of safe departure for the elderly, the children, and depending on the tribe, the women?
What you can’t expect, however, is for the players to for some reason let the orcs leave the impromptu siege freely just because they brought women and children along. It’s not the players’ fault that the warband brought non-combatants to a war: you can’t put children aboard a battle-ready warship and then scold your enemy for sinking it.
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I’m of the opinion that the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were perfectly justified, as well as Sherman’s employment of “Total War,” so I don’t really have a problem with this answer.
Hell, this solution you have provided sounds terribly vanilla to me. You haven’t suggested literally smoki
… (more)Forceful recruitment in Bannerlord has really endeared me to the ideas of conscription, I must admit.
They’re orcs. More importantly, they’re a hostile military force in operation. Just remember that their “noncombatants” are key parts of their ability to wage war, and would indeed be considered military targets.
No, they wouldn’t be, if we’re using any modern legal definition, and the terminology of ‘military targets’, a modern distinction, implies we are. Noncombatant lives are inviolate under the prevailing international law and has been so for quite a while.
Now, this doesn’t prevent anyone from targeting
… (more)There’s one answer- the DNVP and the Zentrum.
After the March 1933 elections, the NSDAP controlled 288 seats in the Reichstag: but that wasn’t enough for an absolute majority in the Reichstag. For that, he’d have needed 324 seats: a total of 36 missing seats.
The little parties in the Reichstag outside the ‘big five’ controlled 33: even if Hitler could somehow secure the aid of all of those disparate groups(and that would be impossible), he would still be three short. Thus, he needed to go for the other large parties: and since neither the communists nor the social democrats were an option, the end result was of Kaas’ Zentrum and Hugenberg’s DNVP.
After the March 1933 elections, the last before the Enabling Act, any ruling government would have had to include the Nazis: the only feasible alternative that could rule in any way beyond a Brüning-esque chancellorship of ruling purely by Hindenburg’s decree would have been a Schleicher-esque Querfront: but that would require either a split in the NSDAP that Hitler decisively prevented by reducing Strasser to irrelevance, or the collaboration of communists that Thalmann would never consider. This created a familiar position in German politics: Hitler was powerful enough that he would be the leader of any functioning government, but he wasn’t powerful enough to rule alone unless he wanted to act like how his predecessors had and reduced his ability to do anything to Hindenburg’s willingness to let him.
This gave Zentrum and most especially DNVP disproportionate influence. They could not be kings, but they could be kingmakers.
The makeup of the Hitler Cabinet reflected DNVP’s influence. Of the eleven members, only three were part of the NSDAP: Hitler himself, Göring as a minister without portfolio, and Frick as Minister of the Interior. All the rest were either DNVP members, including Hugenberg(holding dual post as Ministers of Economics and Food and Agriculture), Seldte(Minister of Labour) and Gürtner(Reich Minister of Justice), or Papen’s national conservatives(who, although technically independent, in truth were really effectively DNVP members), including Papen himself as Vice-Chancellor, Neurath as Foreign Affairs, Krosigk as Finance, Eltz-Rübenach holding dual post as Transport and Postal Affairs, and Werner von Blomberg as Minister of the Reichswehr. A fourth Nazi was added in March 1933, before the Enabling Act, in form of Goebbels as the newly established Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda.
Considering that even after Goebbels joined,there were only three Nazi ministers under Hitler, and one of them had no portfolio and a second, Frick, was functionally powerless(most of the traditional ‘responsibilities’ of a ministry of the interior was instead under the purview of state governments), it is easy to see why the DNVP and Papen’s conservative clique, outnumbering the Nazis two to one, saw it not harmful to themselves to see the Enabling Act, one that empowered the government and the cabinet as a whole, passed. Zentrum also factored in here- as over Brüning’s objections, Kaas and most of the party elected to vote for the Act in exchange of lofty promises.
Without the Act, Hitler would’ve been permanently dependent on DNVP and/or Zentrum votes on any issue discussed in the Reichstag, neither of whom were beholden to Hitler’s will, both of which had ideological differences, and both of which would be aware of the power of kingmaking. With the Act, he could now move alone: elective majority meant nothing, and was no longer necessary.
The bargain was long sealed, and soon the devil would come calling. Deftly using the mass of the Sturmabteilung, the legal force of the police(which in Prussia was controlled by Göring and elsewhere by Frick who had taken them over after the Reichstag Fire Decree), and his own political finesse, Hitler shattered both DNVP and Zentrum in a matter of months.
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And he had the “Reichstagsfire” to begin with, dispatching the Communists.
The fire was set by a Dutch communist I believe.
As if burning the Reichstag (or storming it) would somehow bring Germany under the control of the Communists.
(As if wandering around in the halls of the Capital and taking se
Karma for the Treaty of Versailles? What?
It’s true that, a lot of Hitler’s actions were motivated by the desire to tear apart the ‘Versailles Diktat’. It’s even true that some of his actions with respect to that ultimate aim were noble ones, such as the unification with Austria, which would’ve happened in 1920 with Austrian popular consent if not for Versailles and Saint-Germain.
But here’s the thing. Whether we’re talking about Hitler’s actions that are genuinely just(such as remilitarization of the Rhineland or annexation of Austria), genuinely despicable(such as the Nuremberg Laws and other acts of persecution against minorities, ranging from run-of-the-mill discrimination to outright genocide) or just in the middle, whether they are directly concerned with Versailles or not, if we’re calling Hitler’s actions and I quote ‘karma’ for Versailles… well, first let’s see what ‘karma’ means:
Thank you, Merriam-Webster.
So, basically, for us to be able to call Hitler’s actions ‘karma for Versailles’, those who suffered from Hitler’s actions should be the people who are responsible for Versailles. For us to be able use the term, Hitler needs to be the almost-divinely-sent punishment for Versailles.
Tell me. Who was it directly responsible for Versailles, and suffered later as a result of Hitler’s actions? Who? Did anything happen to, say, Clemenceau, who had come to Paris demanding the whole Rhineland? Poincare, notoriously aggressive and anti-German as they came, who ordered the Ruhr occupation of 1923, did anything happen to him? Foch, who thought the already punitive Versailles treaty as impossibly lenient? Only one of these three even lived long enough to see Hitler be Chancellor, and that one, Poincare, died in 1934.
What about the British? Lloyd George, shrieking ‘Hang the Kaiser!’ as his election program, had his political career not collapsed before Hitler’s rise to power? Did anything happen to him by Hitler’s actions? Or the Americans? Wilson, who came to Versailles with lofty ideals on paper, but with neither the ability to make them obeyed except where convenient to his allies, nor actually caring about doing it? Did he not die in 1924?
Who, I would ask that somebody, among the victims of Hitler’s actions, were responsible for Versailles?
“Our Fallen,” says this pyramid erected in Cologne in 1934, “the Reich Association of Jewish Frontline Soldiers.” It is a memorial to the twelve thousand German Jews who died in the Great War: one out of every seven who went to that war to begin with. One out of seven, who spilled their life’s blood in Flanders fields or the endless expanse of Russia or in so many other fronts, who died trying to make sure Versailles wouldn’t come to pass.
Their families, and their comrades in arms, and the families of those, were among the first victims of Hitler’s Germany. They would not be the last.
That’s not karma.
Even if all the people who suffered at the hands of the Hitler regime, every single one of them, had been to various degrees responsible for Versailles, even then those actions would be vile, and repulsive. But if that was the case, maybe it would be understandable to call it some twisted, perverse, despicable form of karma. A loathsome form, without which the world would be better off, but still- if that was the case, I would at least understand the logic of the claim someone was making to that end. It would not be a conclusion I agree with, for no matter how many bad adjectives you tack on in front of it the word ‘karma’ still carries a meaning of ‘they had it coming’, but I would understand its logic.
But it wasn’t. It couldn’t be. Many were caused by Versailles, true. Mayhaps Hitler wouldn’t even be a politician without that treaty. But ‘karma’ it was not, and calling it ‘karma’ is nothing but a detestable excuse: as if God himself had sent down a scourge to punish the world for Versailles, except for some strange reason that I do not think the person who came up with this perverse justification would explain, he sent it, for the most part, on people who had nothing to do with that treaty.
What would I say to someone making that justification? Tell that to those twelve thousand, I would say: who gave their life for Germany’s sake, and then had to watch from afterlife their families driven from their country, if they were lucky enough to flee, or find themselves in some labor or extermination camp in God knows where, if they weren’t.
That was Hitler’s legacy. He set out on a seemingly righteous task: restore Germany to honour, to her place in the world, lift her up from the ruin she was left in. And he pursued what would have been a righteous aim with the most vile of methods, and next to those methods, the abstract righteousness of his dream for a strong Germany ceased to have any importance or value.
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Your answer is accurate to the pop-culture Western usage of ‘Karma’, which I see Merriam-Webster has subscribed to (witness the decline o scholarship in the Anglosphere!), and I suppose what the questioner was thinking too, but that is not what Kharma actually means.
People mistakenly think that Khar
… (more)This is a very good point, and possibly should be an answer of its own along with a proper clarification of the original meaning of ‘karma’.
That being said, I do not think *that* original meaning is what most people who would call Hitler’s actions ‘karma for Versailles’ actually mean. I wouldn’t cal
… (more)Joseph ScottI agree that you answered what the questioner was most likely asking, and for that, it was a good answer. The topic of Germany’s WWI Jewish veterans was especially poignant, all the more given the evolution of Volksgemeinschaft out of Frontgemeinschaft. That was a bit of remarkable philosophical hypocrisy. I’m just here fighting the rearguard action for proper usage. I do think it’s a decline of scholarship on Merriam-Webster’s part, but I am something of a linguistic purist. From my perspective, a dictionary ought to be the guardian of true meanings, rather then merely a lexicon of the vulgar argot. Thus, in my opinion, the dictionary should state the original, true meaning as definition 1, and include all additional common usage meanings below that, properly marked as slang or coll.. That would acknowledge common usage, without surrendering wholesale to the butchering of language. Let’s just say that as far as my views on language, and the relative value of the common and new versus the old and learned, I am metaphorically and ideologically next-door neighbours with J.R.R. Tolkien.
The treatment of the Jewish German soldiers of WWI is one of the chapters of history that is glossed over frequently.
Thank you for your excellent post.
When I look at this ban, the first thing that comes to mind, even above my personal displeasure with watching a nation stabbing a knife into yet another part of its own history with the excuse of events for which said part holds no real blame, is just how… pointless it is.
Now, I’m quite sure no sane or reasonable person would make the claim that the tricolor of the old Empire has any intrinsic, innate connection to an ideology whose founder wouldn’t even be born for more than two decades after the flag was created. No- the argument I heard from anyone who defends this decision is that, while the Imperial flag(and the Imperial war flag, also banned) has no innate connection to Nazis, it’s nowadays used overwhelmingly by Nazis, neo-Nazis and all manner of other racists. Ergo, it has practically became a neo-Nazi symbol, and thus, should be banned.
While I have no data as to whether it’s true that it’s mostly used by adherents of the aforementioned ideological groups, from anecdotal experience I suspect that it is at least partially the case. I will not deny that the two flags in question have been largely appropriated by inveterate racists of all stripes, and although there is a strange irony in seeing a neo-Nazi pose in front of the proud black eagle of Prussia, the state that championed Jewish emancipation across Germany, this appropriation of a symbol that I, a bit of a Prussophile if I have to confess, admire, by ideologies that I find thoroughly detestable, causes me no small amount of distress and annoyance.
However, I find this ban thoroughly pointless for reasons beyond my personal sympathies with those flags and what those flags used to represent.
Let us assume, for the sake of the argument, that banning the symbols used by a despicable political movement is an effective way of weakening that movement. That if we go and forbid neo-Nazis from using their symbols in public, that action will inflict genuine harm on the prospects of this movement.
But here’s the thing. The very reasoning for this ban is that although the Imperial civil and war flags aren’t in and of themselves Nazi symbols, they are heavily appropriated by them and thus, have become Nazi symbols in practice. And this reasoning undermines itself. Because if we’re admitting that we’re banning a symbol that has nothing to do with Nazism or neo-Nazism because Nazis and neo-Nazis have appropriated it, then we are admitting that the Nazis and neo-Nazis are clearly capable of taking a symbol that has nothing to do with them and appropriating it for their usage, because, well, that’s what they did with the Imperial flags!
Thus, the question Bremen should have asked before this ban is this: Exactly how long do they expect it will take for the neo-Nazis of Bremen to find some other irrelevant symbol to twist into their banner? Because that is exactly how long the ‘disruption’ of the neo-Nazis caused by banning their symbols, whose existence we have taken as axiomatic for the sake of the argument, will last. And honestly? If I were a neo-Nazi in Bremen, who could no longer use the Imperial flags, I could come up with a replacement within the day. The most it’d cost me would be the money I spent to buy or make the new flags.
Which, then, raises the question: Was it worth it banning the display of the flag under which Germany united into one state for the first time in a thousand years, for the sake of mildly inconveniencing neo-Nazis for a few days? And what does Bremen have in mind when the inevitable appropriation of other symbols and other flags by the neo-Nazis happen? Do they intend to keep banning symbols of their own country one after the other in some ridiculous arms race of symbols?
What, indeed, would Bremen do if next week a bunch of neo-Nazis went out on one of their loathsome little rallies, holding up white flags with the black Eisernes Kreuz in the center? Ban the symbol of the Bundeswehr?
Then again, mayhap there is a pragmatism in Bremen’s action. After all, there is a reason why the old Imperial flags were so easily appropriated by neo-Nazis: they were hollow symbols. All of what they originally stood for is gone now, half murdered by Hitler, quite deliberately, and the other half by those who came after him and thought that by stabbing their knives into the carcass of Prussia they were waging a war against Nazism. They were empty symbols, their meanings demonized, their defenders dead, and it was this that let the neo-Nazis steal it so easily, for there was nobody there to defend it from them.
And for this exact reason, there is today nobody there to mourn it. The neo-Nazis will drop it by the wayside, and go out to steal yet another abandoned symbol. And what will Bremen have lost, other than a symbol that has already been dead for half a century? The ban gains Bremen extremely little- but it costs Bremen exactly nothing, for if there had been enough Germans who cared about the Imperial flags and what they represented, those would never have become neo-Nazi symbols to begin with.
More than one hundred and fifty years ago, it had been in Bremen the idea of the old Imperial tricolour was first born: an union of the Prussian black and white, and Hanseatic white and red. It has been the collective work of all of Germany to bring that flag to ruin, and all it stood for- perhaps it is fitting, one and a half century later, for Bremen to serve as the undertaker.
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Wouldn’t it be fun, if the Neo-Nazis started wawing the Black-Red-and-Yellow as their symbol?
Then the German government would have to ban their own national flag…
It would be- though that may require the Neo-Nazis to have an average IQ above room temperature levels.
Jesper Juul KellerGood point. The only Neo-Nazi I can think of, who isn’t dumber than wet cardboard, would be their “historian”, David Irving.
Although I am more a Habsburg fan I know a bit of the contemporary monarchist leaning scene in Germany which is tiny. The Imperial flag is used by the Hohenzollern fans and -the descendants of- the refugees of the lost areas in the East. Most belong to the Conservative Wing of the CDU, not the Extre
… (more)Before answering this question, I want to make a little demonstration. I wish to list several organizations in the Third Reich, and I want you to think on what is common between these.
- Forschungsamt des Reichsluftfahrt Ministerium(Research Office of the Reich Ministry of Aviation)
- Oberkommando der Wehrmacht Chiffrierabteilung(Cipher Department of the High Command of the Wehrmacht)
- Beobachtungsdienst(lit. Observation Service)
- Chiffrierstelle, Oberbefehlshaber der Luftwaffe(Cipher Centre, High Commander of the Luftwaffe)
- Inspektion 7 Gruppe VI
- Auslandsamt(Foreign Department) of the Abwehr
- Sonderdienst des Referats Z in der Personalabteilung des Auswärtigen Amtes(Special Service of Z Branch of the Foreign Office Personnel Department)
- Forschungsstelle(Research Bureau) of the Deutsche Reichspost(Reich Post Service)
- Section F of the Amt VI of the Sicherheitsdienst des Reichsführer-SS(Security Service of the Reichsführer-SS)
Any ideas what’s the common point? Any? Come on- it’s not that hard.
If you said ‘Wait- all of these kind of sound like cryptology departments,’ congratulations: get yourself a cookie. Yes. These were all cryptology departments. All nine of them.
The Forschungsamt was the cipher bureau of the NSDAP, administered by Göring in his capacity as the Reich Minister of Aviation, who also controlled Luftwaffe’s Chiffrierstelle. The OKW had its own cipher office, the Chiffrierabteilung, and Abwehr’s Auslandamt, despite being officially subordinate to the OKW, ran its own cipher office right next door(literally: both these were housed in the headquarters of their superior organizations, which were located adjacent to each other in Berlin). Inspektion 7 Gruppe VI, later renamed Leitstelle der Nachrichtenaufklärung, was the cipher office of the OKH(the Army high command), while the Beobachtungsdienst was that of the Navy. Sonderdienst des Referats Z was the cipher office of the German Foreign Office, while the Section F of the Ausland-SD was another Party cipher office, this time under the auspices of Himmler’s SS.
And finally, yes, the goddamned Reich Post Service had a cipher office.
You could literally go to the Bendlerblock in Berlin, and that tiny area would be home to four cipher offices, run by the OKW, the OKH, the OKM, and the Abwehr, all of them literally neighboring each other. Or, if you wanted a change of sights, you could pop over to Wilhelmstraße and find another four: one in the Foreign Office building, one in the RSHA headquarters that used to be the Prinz Albrecht Palace, and in the corner of the street two more in Göring’s Reich Ministry of Aviation headquarters. And despite being literally in walking distance of each other, cooperation and collaboration between them was extremely minor: not nonexistent, but very minor.
The building of the Reich Ministry of Aviation on the corner of the Wilhelmstraße, which today houses the Federal Ministry of Finance. Within it were two separate cipher offices, and they barely communicated. Picture from the German federal archives.
The reason I gave the example of these cipher offices is to highlight an important aspect of the Reich often lost on people. Of course, it was Göring’s own choice to bar the Kriegsmarine from a naval air arm that it’d use much more efficiently, without the need for liaison between two separate military services. Any consequences thereof, naturally, are on Göring’s shoulder.
However, I think it worth it to highlight that this wasn’t Göring being especially and unreasonably power-hungry. Like many others in the Reich, Göring played the hand the Führer dealt him.
Functionally, the Third Reich wasn’t so much a state as it was an almost-feudal web of countless fiefdoms sworn to one single liege. And as with any smart feudal liege with so powerful vassals, Hitler deftly played them against each other. The security of Hitler’s power was built on the fractures between his underlings, who he deliberately goaded into snapping at each other in a race for the Führer’s favor. The end result was that the institutions of the State rapidly devolved into individual fiefs, each of whom distrusted the rest and with only the iron persona of Hitler providing unity.
This gave a functionally unassailable power base to Hitler. The distrust between the Reich’s institutions meant it was functionally out of question for them to ever work together against Hitler, and their predisposition towards hostility to each other made it trivial for Hitler to, if necessary, call upon others to cut down to size anyone getting out of line.
As evidenced by his masterly use of the SS’ desire for independence, the Reichswehr’s fears and Hindenburg’s concerns to bring the hammer down on the SA back in 1934, Hitler was an expert in this kind of manipulation.
However, effective though this was in securing Hitler’s power, this sort of feuding factionism did the Reich’s overall prospects no favors. As is natural in any environment this cutthroat, the factions of the Reich struggled to gather as much power and responsibility in their hands, so that they’d have to rely on their rivals as little as possible, and when they had to, such cooperation was often fragile.
In a system that encouraged its cogs to try and swallow up every single piece of power, responsibility and authority, lest they be smashed by other cogs that have grown bigger on such, the result was inevitable. I don’t think Göring even thought whether it’d be militarily feasible or effective to give the Kriegsmarine a naval air arm: because the answer did not matter.
One of his foremost rivals for power, influence and Hitler’s favor was trying to get a hold of a considerable part of Göring’s area of responsibility. In the cutthroat web of intrigue that characterized the internal affairs of the Reich, Göring could only have one answer.
Of course, the irony of it was that the same methods that helped Hitler secure his power beyond challenge were, at least partially, the same reason that in just a few years, all that power extended only within a cold, lonely bunker underneath the ruins of Berlin. He held, without challenge or question, the entire power of his country: until the point where all that power was only just enough to let him choose how he died.
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You get a cipher office and you get a cipher office and you get a cipher office! Everybody gets a cipher office!
Except you, Göring. You get two cipher offices!
Ibrahim G ZalloumGöring gets an extra office for his extra size… In all seriousness though: the conflicting bureaucracies are common in dictatorships. It’s why they’re often ultimately inefficient.
Some of those cipher offices were helping their master to spy on the other branches of the government and their masters.
Clearly what the Reich really needed, more than oil, infrastructure, or logistics, was more cryptology departments. Always more cryptology departments.
More cowbell, I need more cowbell!!
I do realize that Scott Adams has a bit of a reputation, a justified one, for making wacky statements. For my own part, I do not hear or follow a lot of what Adams says, but when I hear, it is not very common for me to agree with him. But… what he says in this case has some, and only some, truth in it.
For reference, his tweet is below:
The ‘Antifa’ in question here is the German Antifaschistische Aktion, a paramilitary organization founded by, and under the umbrella of, the Communist Party of Germany. Strictly speaking, today’s Antifa, in US or elsewhere, doesn’t have any direct organizational ties to the Weimar Antifa, but considering it has chosen to adopt the name, the insignia, and in a lot of cases the ideology, I think it’s fair to judge the two as at the very least connected organizations.
Now, saying that Antifa, or for that matter the KPD, were allied with Hitler is a considerable exaggeration, and I can’t help but wonder if this is Adams making an error or deliberately overstating things. However, the Weimar communists possessed a belief that was extremely common among the communists of the time, and still is seen pretty often: they regarded the moderate left as either traitors to the movement, or as fascists. Indeed, Antifa itself was founded explicitly against the social democrats’ Iron Front alliance, not against the Nazis.
In the Weimar Republic, the SPD was the communists’ arch-enemy- an arch-enemy they fought not only electorally, but with also violent means. With the SPD being one of the only two parties in Weimar Germany that actually wanted to preserve democracy, this alone would, intentionally or not, have assisted Hitler’s rise.
This, of course, wasn’t all. Make no mistake: the Weimar communists and Nazis weren’t friends, and they saw each other as enemies right to the end. But while Hitler abhorred the communists, the communists saw him as the lesser evil in comparison to the social democrats. As a result, in a number of cases, the two groups collaborated against social democrats: such collaborations were regional, temporary, and always tenuous, collaborations between enemies willing to temporarily work together on specific matters and little more, but they were collaborations still.
In the Nazi Party, in its early days a considerably more socialist organization than it later became, the communists of Weimar, including the Antifa, saw a lesser evil compared to the social democrats- a lesser evil they could occasionally work with against their common enemy. Indeed, when Hitler’s rise to power saw the obliteration of the KPD and its institutions, many communists flocked to the ranks of the NSDAP. The Sturmabteilung, the part of the NSDAP closest to hardliner communism, saw a significant influx of those. Nearly three quarters of recruits post- Hitler’s Chancellorship was made up of former communists according to Gestapo findings, leading to the SA’s oldtimers nicknaming them ‘steaks’: brown on the outside, red on the inside.
It is a considerable exaggeration to call Antifa in particular or the Weimar communists in general as allied to Hitler- an exaggeration with no place in honest historical debate. It is even debatable how much their actions helped Hitler rise to power, and if he wouldn’t have been able to do so if the KPD had acted differently- and I’d argue if the KPD were to act ‘different’ enough to actually be able to prevent the rise of the Nazi regime, they would’ve ceased to be communists.
But the fact is, both as the unintended consequences of actions with different goals, and as direct, but admittedly fairly limited, collaboration against a perceived greater evil, Antifaschistische Union and the KPD did help the rise to power of that awful ideology in some amount. Irrespective of the scale and the importance of that contribution, naturally, they must bear the sins of such.
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But while Hitler abhorred the communists, the communists saw him as the lesser evil in comparison to the social democrats.
Well, while I suppose hardly any leftist today would not look at that and call you a madman, because of, well, *waves arms at everything that happened since 1933* that’s precisel
… (more)the communists saw him as the lesser evil in comparison to the social democrats
Communists still hate social democrats. Because unlike communists, social democrats actually deliver better life for the working class.
It didn’t.
Now, it is true that throughout WW2, except in some parts of 1941, Soviet forces in the field had an overwhelming superiority in equipment over the Germans. That is not a disputable fact. It is also true that when you look at the obvious comparison points of, say, production of tanks, the Soviets also have a major advantage.
However, the reason for this wasn’t because the Soviet industrial output was greater than that of the Germans. Rather, there are four reasons.
Reason one is cherry-picked statistics. As said above, the Soviets, for example, considerably outproduced the Germans in tanks and self propelled guns. But if one just casually throws around the statistic ‘Germans produced 6180 tanks and self-propelled guns in 1942, the Soviets produced 24.649!’ and leaves it at that, one will get the impression that this was universally the case in everything between Soviet and German production, and as we’ll see in further examples, it wasn’t.
A second reason is that in certain fields, given ‘statistics’ of produced equipment don’t necessarily reflect the industrial effort required. For example, a simple look at numbers reveals that the Soviets produced 21.808 front line aircraft, not counting gliders or training aircraft, in 1942, while the Germans produced 13.632. However, the Soviets overwhelmingly produced single-engine fighters and attack aircraft, while just over half of the German aircraft production consisted of twin-engine bombers, night fighters and bomber destroyers, and there were also hundreds of three-engine, four-engine, and even a few six-engine aircraft. As a result, while the Soviets produced sixty percent more aircraft than the Germans in raw numbers, they produced only about eleven percent more engines, and actually five percent less in total airframe weight. Surely, if the Germans had produced four thousand less twin-enginers and eight thousand more single-enginers, the numbers would look a bit less skewed.
Junkers Ju 88 bombers destined for Russia on the assembly line, picture from the German federal archives. It used two engines rather than one, and when empty weighed four times as much, as a Yakovlev Yak-7 fighter, but both count as ‘one aircraft’ in numbers not subject to analysis.
However, the above are, frankly, the lesser two reasons. The two following reasons had considerably greater effect: the Soviet industry seems as if it managed to outproduce the Germans, because of two luxuries that the Soviets had, but the Germans didn’t.
For one, the Soviets had the luxury of fighting on one front, one war. Thus, the entire material effort of the country could be poured towards things that would be useful for the war in the front. On the other hand, Germany was, at any time from the start of the war in the East, was engaged in at least three other major military theaters, including one massive air and one massive naval campaign. These required production of materiel that couldn’t be of any use in the East, and thus are, understandably, not factored into ‘production comparisons’, but still siphoned production effort that could have been spent in other means.
A particularly noteworthy example of this is naval production. In 1942, the Soviets built fifteen warships- submarines and destroyers and torpedo boats. Germans built nine destroyers and torpedo boats, and 222 submarines. That many submarines is worth more than eight hundred million Reichsmarks of industrial effort, as much money as another eight thousand Panzer III’s, yet that much effort is ignored in every single comparison of the war in the East.
And finally, the Soviet Union fought its war alongside multiple formidable industrial powers: powers willing to lend considerable material aid to the Union. As a result, the Soviets, knowing their need in various fields would be partially or fully met by lend lease, could scale down or even outright stop their production and redirect factories and raw materiel to other fields. On the other hand, Germany was the industrial heart of the European Axis: let alone benefiting from material contributions of allies, Germany had to be the one to export arms and materiel to her allied states to enable them to fight in a modern warfare. Germany had to meet all of her needs on her own: no external aid was coming.
The golden example is that of train cars and locomotives, the production of which the Soviets pretty much halted throughout the war. The Soviet industry produced a total of 102 locomotives and 268 train cars in the entire three year period of 1942–1944, while the Germans produced, had to produce, in 1942 alone 2637 locomotives and nearly 61.000 train cars.
Another good example is the production of motor vehicles. The overwhelming superiority in tank production was achieved by employing the majority of Soviet automotive industry in that and letting lend lease compensate for shortages of the rest: as a result, although the Soviets outproduced the Germans in tanks and assault guns, they were comprehensively outproduced in all other vehicles. In 1942, the Germans produced forty percent more armored cars and armored halftracks, three times as many trucks and unarmored halftracks, more than twice as many artillery tractors, and more than ten times as many cars than the Soviets did- that was the price of the great difference in tank numbers.
When it comes down to it, German industry comprehensively outproduced the Soviets in ground vehicles, warships, shells of all caliber and bombs, effectively tied them in aircraft, and were comprehensively outproduced in artillery pieces, mortar rounds and small arms. I really wouldn’t define this as the Soviet industry outproducing Germany.
Figures are correct but need some explanation and extension.
First, apples with apples.
50–80% (especially trucks, guns etc) where produced by France and Czechs, not Germany
Germany had 7 millions slave and foreign workers not counting millions in occupied Europe. Russia was left with 50% of its manpow
… (more)Some of these are not entirely accurate, but valid points:
“50–80% (especially trucks, guns etc) where produced by France and Czechs, not Germany”
This is an exaggeration, fifty to eighty percent, but true that the French and Czech factories contributed in noticeable amounts.
“Germany had 7 millions sl
… (more)Benzion InditskyI stand by every rough estimate I’ve posted. In fact some of them are quite conservative. Devil is in details and I suggest you to be more careful. I’ll not immerse in details but the following quote from a scientific paper tells all you need to know: “In this paper, we examine perhaps the most successful case where the collapse of the French Third Republic left Hitler’s Germany in control of a nearly equally powerful industrial economy. To finance its continuing war on other fronts, Germany secured a massive and, perhaps, unparalleled transfer of resources from France. On the other side I’ve left Lend lease out. Just short summary which hopefully urge you to reconsider your comment. Murmansk 1941 “Most visibly, the United States provided the Soviet Union with more than 400,000 jeeps and trucks, 14,000 aircraft, 8,000 tractors and construction vehicles, and 13,000 battle tanks. However, the real significance of Lend-Lease for the Soviet war effort was that it covered the "sensitive points" of Soviet production -- gasoline, explosives, aluminum, nonferrous metals, radio communications, and so on, says historian Boris Sokolov. Under Lend-Lease, the United States provided more than one-third of all the explosives used by the Soviet Union during the war. The United States and the British Commonwealth provided 55 percent of all the aluminum the Soviet Union used during the war and more than 80 percent of the copper. Lend-Lease also sent aviation fuel equivalent to 57 percent of what the Soviet Union itself produced. Much of the American fuel was added to lower-grade Soviet fuel to produce the high-octane fuel needed by modern military aircraft. The Lend-Lease program also provided more than 35,000 radio sets and 32,000 motorcycles. When the war ended, almost 33 percent of all the Red Army's vehicles had been provided through Lend-Lease. More than 20,000 Katyusha mobile multiple-rocket launchers were mounted on the chassis of American Studebaker trucks.
Well, Soviet economy was also supported by slave labour. Even if (according to Roger Moorhouse) the higher death rate in Gulag when compared to Nazi camps meant it probably contributed less. It is still not right to say that Germany used slave labour while Soviet Union didn’t.
Also, while Germany did
… (more)Peter ThomsonThe death rate comparison is false, from all I have read. Soviet productivity in the gulag (mostly criminals) was higher than in German forced labour camps - and the death rate in many German camps was near total.
… (more)For one, the Soviets had the luxury of fighting on one front, one war. Thus, the entire material effort of the country could be poured towards things that would be useful for the war in the front. On the other hand, Germany was, at any time from the start of the war in the East, was engaged in at le
“Germans took away their resources away from Britain after BoB, and treated African theater as a sideshow, leaving Rommel to scrounge for supplies by capturing them. Battle of Atlantic was basically fought with submarines and against merchant shipping after a few convoy-raiding attempts by surface s
… (more)Ozgur ZerenYes. It having been fought by submarines is exactly the point. Producing submarines is not the same with producing an actual surface fleet. The effort went to Bismarck by itself would amount for many submarines that could have been built. Gross exaggeration. I’ll treat you to Führer Directive No: 51, November 1943(issued within one week of Rundstedt’s 28 October report on the dismal situation of the defenses in the West), which outlined massive measures for the strengthening of the West that I will not copy here. Indeed, and Atlantic Wall was built for it: A series of complex fortifications. Basically construction. Buildings, weapon emplacements - not in enough manners even, as can be seen from how certain beaches on D-Day were much more fortified than others, and some lacked supplies. But troops, tanks, aircraft were not diverted at large from Eastern Front to wait for the pending invasion, as you will remember. By late 1941, lend lease equipment represented nearly a third of Soviet frontline medium and heavy tank strength. That’s a small set of equipment to pick from. Even accounting the preference of Soviets for M4 later on and using it exclusively because it was more reliable when advancing does not change the fact that majority of Lend Lease came obsolete and went to back line duty. While i agree with your general point of the production comparison not being made entirely fairly, i still think that it does not make argument-changing difference. Hersh Bortman’s below post - which you may have read - puts what i think about this in a short and concise manner with some references. Hersh Bortman's answer to Could the Soviet Union have defeated Nazi Germany on its own?
Over 800 U-Boats were built and fought (and mostly got sunk) in The Battle of The Atlantic. In crude terms, the opportunity cost of that fleet was worth over 34,000 tanks (purely in cost terms a U-Boat cost 4.2RM and a Panzer IV around 100K RM), and actually significantly more than that when you add
… (more)Matthias HeinzeAnd Germany built 0 (zero) air raid shelters, underground factories or U-boat pens to defend against the USSR (strategic) bombing.
Yes. It was considerably more motorized.
There used to be a majorly held, ahistorical belief that the Wehrmacht was an overwhelmingly, if not totally, motorized force: that belief seems to have thankfully mostly vanished today, but it has left its place to an equally inane belief in that motorization in the Wehrmacht was a rarity, only a property of a handful of divisions, while the rest was wholly horse drawn.
It is, indeed, true that more than 600.000 horses were amassed for Barbarossa. From supply columns to field kitchens, those animals were engaged in countless tasks, and without them the task of Barbarossa would indeed have been an impossibility. But what people do ignore or forget is that for Barbarossa was also gathered six hundred thousand motor vehicles: trucks, motorcycles, cars and artillery tractors. For every horse, there was a motor vehicle.
A quick look through the authorized tables of equipment of German and Soviet formations is telling. A full strength Soviet rifle division, in its full mobilization strength, would have 585 trucks and light transport vehicles. This was some ten percent less than that of the average German infantry division, which, combined with the usage of heavier 2.5 and 3-ton trucks in German divisions compared to the terminal reliance on 1.5-ton vehicles on Soviet formations that a German infantry division had twice the transport lift capacity of its Soviet counterpart. Of course, this counts authorized strength: and while the aforementioned authorized strength was mostly the case for German divisions, most of the Soviet divisions in the West were in their peacetime organization, and on average, they lacked half of the trucks authorized to them even in their reduced situation. The situation on the ground was soon made official with the change in rifle division TOE in July 1941: the personnel was cut by twenty-five percent, artillery and AT guns reduced to a third, and the motorized transport fell from 607 trucks and light transport vehicles to 202.
And of course, then there’s the question of the Soviet mechanized arm: the paper tiger of 1941. Although, on paper, the largest armored and motorized force in the world, and indeed larger than the motorized and armored formations of the rest of the world combined, in truth the state of these divisions were downright abysmal.
A 1941 German Panzer division, with 182 tanks, had a complement of 2304 trucks and light transport to its name. A Soviet tank division, with more than twice as many tanks, was afforded a measly 1568: combined with heavier trucks in the German divisions, an average Panzer division had almost five times the authorized transport lift compared to the Soviet tank division. Even worse, Soviet mechanized and tank divisions in the Western districts had around half their authorized tank strength on average, but less than thirty percent of their authorized truck transport: which meant, despite on average having the same number of tanks, a German Panzer division had fifteen times the motorized transport lift capacity.
In terms of motorization, the Soviet army was paying the price of trying to expand from eight mechanized corps in June 1940 to twenty-nine mechanized corps in February 1941, and from 98 rifle and mountain rifle divisions in 1938 to 198 rifle and mountain rifle divisions in 1941. The result, come 1941, was an endless sea of divisions, and nothing to fill them with.
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Mechanization created massive logistical liability for a military. You need a lot of skilled mechanics, fuel, and spare parts just to maintain all vehicles keep them in operation. Only industrially powerful and economically prosperous nation can afford extensive mechanization for its military. Moder
… (more)“And of course, then there’s the question of the Soviet mechanized arm: the paper tiger of 1941. Although, on paper, the largest armored and motorized force in the world, and indeed larger than the motorized and armored formations of the rest of the world combined, in truth the state of these divisi
… (more)This is… really, not very accurate.
To begin with, I sincerely think you have the cart before the horse there. If, in a new era of warfare, the whole world, a dozen different, fully industrialized militaries all of whom can be assumed to be at least have some level of competence, follow a series of d
… (more)Niko NištaGermany lacked experience? That’s a puzzling argument. What was Poland then? Granted they didn’t do a particularly fine job of it in Poland, but it was a large set piece campaign on terrain largely favourable to maneuver and combined arms warfare. It allowed them to iron out the kinks in their theories. And crucially, their enemy was weak enough to not crush them when they had to partially resort to “traditional” tactics in order to win. The French and British had nothing remotely of that sort. No chance to use hundreds or thousands of tanks, no experience maneuvering behind enemy lines, no feel for the kind of logistics and support you need to make that work. The Soviets fought in Finland, who’s terrain was far too inhospitable for armored maneuvers to give them an accurate gauge for such things. Also, I could have phrased that better: Everyone the Germans triumphed over had the industrial and infrastructural muscle to field a competent mechanized force, with decently armed and armored vehicles, the infantry, motorization and the litany of support units needed to make them work. They had the ingredients, (mostly) they didn’t know the ratios or how long to cook it or serve it, or what condiments go well with it. You can know that in principal you need support units and infantry and communications and so on and so forth. You can play around with exercises and such, but actually going to war with tanks for even a month (on proper terrain) beats training with them during peace-time for a decade. Hell, as late as 1938, there were German generals opposed to pure armored divisions, asking instead for armored vehicles to be dispersed to the infantry. I don’t know much about the 6th mechanized corps, but even if it war at full strength in terms of motorization, it probably didn’t even have enough support units on paper either.
Couldn't they have just continued improving upon the far more reliable Panzer IV, instead?
And improve how?
The Panzer IV went through ten separate distinct production models, encompassing dozens of changes ranging from massive to miniscule. By the time it was done, a tank that had started out weighing eighteen tons now weighed twenty-five tons: almost half again as much.
No tank ever produced in the history of mankind has been as extensively and thoroughly upgraded from its initial production version as the Panzer IV was. Ever. The Germans squeezed every single drop of potential that could possibly be found within that tank. There was no more to upgrade. Everything that could be upgraded already was.
The fact of the matter is, the Panzer IV was an obsolescent tank, and there is a very good reason why none of the people asking about ‘why did they not upgrade it further!’ can actually suggest a sufficiently major upgrade that the tank could actually bear carrying and make it worth skipping the production of the Panther.
What I find funny is that out of all the tanks produced around the same time period, the Panzer IV is the only one that gets this treatment. Nobody asks if the US should’ve only used M2 Mediums instead of Lees and Shermans(and the M2 Medium was four years newer!). Nobody lambasts the British for switching from the Cruiser series to the Crusader and later the Cromwell. Nobody laments the Soviets starting to produce the T-34 instead of its predecessor the BT-7.
And nobody should, because those were all smart decisions phasing out tanks that were of increasingly less use in a modern battlefield, and trying to purely rely on them would’ve been a monumental act of foolishness. But when it’s Germany deciding that maybe it’s time to find a replacement for a tank several years older than the M2 Medium or the Cruisers, a tank that although excellent has had every drop of potential squeezed out of it and is very long in the tooth as is, the world rings with the litany of condemnations of how it was a bad choice.
If I have to choose between keeping to produce a tank that is getting increasingly obsolescent in a whole host of matters, or starting to phase it out for a tank that costs about half again as much but with more than double the increase in combat potential, excuse me but I’m taking the latter option.
Would the Germans have been better off producing nothing but obsolescent tanks soldiering on only through the excellence of their crews(crews who will be rather rapidly dying because their tank effectively has paper for armor) right down to the end? No. No they wouldn’t.
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In that case, do you think the Germans would have been better served by producing the Panther in its original 30-ton specification and a simplified VK 45 submission, rather than the overweight monstrosities they became?
The Daimler-Benz Panther? Doubtful.
The smaller, lighter Daimler-Benz design had a number of issues. It had considerably less internal space and thus worse crew ergonomics than the production Panther, further exacerbated by its use of a leaf spring suspension that both limited internal space and prov
… (more)Emmett SmithThe torsion bar suspension and the road wheels of the Tiger I tanks were also shared with the MAN Panther design. Late production Tiger Is also used the same cupola as the MAN Panther. Even the Tiger II eventually used these same components (and the late model Panther’s engine).
Given the Germans limited resources building a better widget was the correct answer.
The Tiger need the same crew as the lowly PzIV used only a little more space and only a little more ammunition and a little more fuel (same as a Sherman!). Better deal all around. Panther was the best compromise ov
Because Karl Gebhardt, Himmler’s personal physician who was flown in to Prague to oversee Heydrich’s treatment, refused to.
Germany, unlike common perception, did have a pretty healthy supply of antibiotical drugs and knowledge in how they work and how they were produced. Indeed, Germany was the inventor of synthetic antibiotics, with the first synthetic antibiotic in history, salvarsan, being invented by Paul Ehrlich and Alfred Bertheim in 1907: it would remain as the preeminent global treatment against syphilis until the invention of penicilin.
What Germany lacked was any reliable supply of penicilin- but that didn’t mean there weren’t an useful selection of other antimicrobial agents to be used in its place. Indeed, Heydrich’s situation was such that any modern physician overseeing his treatment would have instituted a strong regimen of antibiotics: the bomb had shredded half of his side, resulting in a sizeable part of his spleen being surgically removed and his wound and parts of his left lung having to be debrided. His wound was contaminated heavily by external debris from his car. He was recovering well, but had a moderate fever: something that should have been an alarm symptom.
Indeed, Hitler’s own personal doctor, Theodor Morell(who was also present) strongly recommended sulfonamide treatment for Heydrich. Morell, before becoming Hitler’s doctor, had a long history of treating skin and venereal diseases for which he would have had to regularly utilize antibiotical agents, and indeed he himself would go on to treat Hitler with several, including penicilin after the 20 July assassination attempt and sulfamethylthiazole for respiratory tract inflammations.
However, Gebhardt, although a famed sports physician before the war, didn’t have much trust in antibiotical treatment, and refused Morell’s insistent suggestion. Several days later, Heydrich’s fever rose, he fell into a coma, and died of sepsis the day after losing consciousness. Sulfonamide treatment might have kept him alive.
Upon Heydrich’s death, Gebhardt went on to spearhead a particularly brutal experiment on inmates in the Ravensbrück concentration camp, aimed at exonerating his decision against sulfonamide. Large numbers of inmates were deliberately infected with various pathogenic microorganisms and split into a control group and a sulfonamide-treated group. The experiment was, of course, deliberately rigged in favor of Gebhardt’s thesis that sulfonamide was useless against sepsis: the control group received decent care, food and supportive treatment while the sulfonamide group was thoroughly mistreated and left malnutritioned.
It is strongly suspected by many today that Gebhardt’s refusal to institute sulfonamide treatment for Heydrich stemmed not from personal incompetence, but from orders from Himmler, who saw in the assassination a chance to rid himself of a very competent, worryingly ambitious, and increasingly powerful subordinate. Especially in light of the fact that the idea of deliberately skewed experiments to exonerate Gebhardt’s decision were suggested by Himmler, who might’ve wanted to have things look like Gebhardt’s professional decision rather than the Reichsführer’s private orders, may suggest indeed that the lack of sulfonamide treatment for Heydrich might have been an entirely deliberate decision rather than botched treatment.
But whether it was the case or not, I don’t think we will ever know for sure.
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Fascinating. More evidence that the Nazis may have looked like a well-organized, selflessly unified machine but were actually a bunch of backstabbing, disorganized gangsters.
Indeed, that is what the Reich was built on. The security of Hitler’s power was built upon deliberately letting state institutions turn into competing fiefdoms that struggled to win Hitler’s favor and would not have the willingness to unite and potentially be a threat.
Sometimes, this could have bene
… (more)Tobin BakerWasn’t the most egregious example the Waffen SS vs. Wehrmacht?
Look up the Night of the Long Knives - Wikipedia where Hitler got rid of his long time ally and personal friend Ernst Röhm who had been instrumental to his rise to power but now became a threat.
Backstabbing was a part of the National Socialist regime from the start.
Himmler definitely seems the type to arrange for a more competent subordinate's death rather than concede that said subordinate would be better at his job and acquiesce.
When Himmler first interviewed Heydrich, he (Himmler) came across badly. There was a quote at the time, to the effect that “Himmler always behaved poorly in the presence of people who he immediately realized were his natural superiors.”
Heydrich probably could have gotten rid of Himmler and made the
… (more)I’ll bet Heydrich had 50 IQ points on the chicken farmer.
Cem ArslanI'll have to quote Göring here: “Of course Himmler has a brain. It's called Heydrich.”
No, he didn’t.
Well, I have to elaborate on that statement. It’s entirely possible, even likely, that Göring, one of the Party’s old guard and a Party member for twenty-three years by the time it was abolished, made some donation at some point during that time to the NSDAP. It might even be so that some of those donations were in the Party’s earlier days.
But when we stop talking about meager donations and talk about Göring funding the Party, well… Göring could at best fund himself in the twenties. It might seem odd considering just how massively rich Göring got under the Nazi rule, but in the mess of the post-Versailles Germany neither the fame of a fighter ace nor the Blue Max around his neck was worth all that much for a man.
By the time Göring met Hitler for the first time in 1922, attending a speech of the latter’s against the French demands for extradition of hundreds of German military persons to be trialed for war crimes(a list that also included Göring), Göring’s sole real income came from his occupation as a civilian pilot. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t want to give the impression of a man barely making ends meet here, but Göring’s personal finances weren’t any more than that of a random middle-class German. Just his wife and him travelling across Europe from Italy(where the two had been in self-imposed exile after the Beer Hall Putsch) to Sweden where his wife Carin’s mother had fallen ill in 1925 would seriously stretch the family finances.
Göring in the twenties wasn’t a rich man- he wasn’t even particularly well off. He might’ve donated to the Party, but any donations he might’ve been able to make would certainly not be enough to mean anything in the grand scheme of things.
Göring gave the Nazi Party three things, none of which had to do with money. For one, Hermann Göring was a charismatic man. He wasn’t a fiery orator like Hitler: but Göring was smart, generally jovial and good-mannered, charismatic and humorous. He could endear himself to people like few others.
Two, Göring was a veteran soldier. This wasn’t at all a rare trait in the Nazi Party: but being any random veteran of the trenches was one thing. Göring was a veteran officer, had commanded a fighter wing, and he was an extremely smart man: even his Nuremberg state would measure a staggering 138 IQ, being one short of being in the top half percentile in the world. Of the ‘old guard’ of the Nazi Party he was easily the best military leader, a skill he put to use during his short tenure as head of the SA.
Most importantly, though, was a question of fame and legitimacy. Hermann Göring was a veritable war hero. Hitler might’ve been a corporal in the trenches; Göring was a renowned ace pilot. Hitler might’ve had the Iron Cross First Class, given to more than two hundred thousand people in the Great War; but Göring had the Pour le Merite, a medal awarded to less than five and a half thousand people for its entire history of over one and a half centuries. Hitler was a dispatch runner at a regimental headquarters; while Göring was the successor to the Red Baron himself.
For a party that less than one year ago only had three thousand members, getting Göring to join aboard was akin to the public endorsement of an admittedly somewhat minor celebrity, and a much useful boost to popularity.
It can be argued that Göring played a pretty strong role in the Nazis’ rise to power in Germany during the twenties- but ‘funding the party’ wasn’t something one can ascribe to him.
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Actually, the reason that the trip to Sweden stretched their finances was because Carin had already donated so generously to the party. They were poor in the l;ate 20s because she had already given away most of the money she had to keep the party running. But, you’re correct, it wasn’t Hermann’s mon
… (more)Well, they’re being called Turkmens because the Iraqis called them as such.
A common policy in countries with regards to minorities, especially in countries that neighbor a nation-state of those minorities, is to reclassify minorities into different groups to sever ties to any nation-state those people may have elsewhere. Other examples of this is how the Turkish minority of Greece is officially only ‘the Muslim minority’, or how the Masurian and Kashubian identities were promoted among Prussian Poles in the German Empire.
When, in the wake of the overthrowing of the Iraqi monarchy in 1958, the ruling military junta reclassified who until then were simply called Iraqi Turks into ‘Turkmens’, this was the reason. More than half a million Turks lived in Iraq, comprising a tenth of the country’s population at the time, and they were concentrated primarily in the northern half of the country, in what are today Nineveh, Erbil, Dohuk, Kirkuk, Saladin, Diyala and Sulaymaniyah Governorates. In a number of major cities, including Kirkuk and Mosul, they formed the largest percentage of population.
The Iraqi Turks had strong cultural and national ties to Turkey, and of the three primary constituent national entities that formed Iraq, at the time they suffered the heaviest mistreatment. As a result, the Iraqi junta saw them as a threat to the country’s unity: among measures taken to cut any ties the Iraqi Turks could have had with Turkey was this rebranding.
However, there was a difference with regards to this compared to our only examples. Unlike in Germany, where ‘Masurian’ simply came to be an indicator of Protestant beliefs and loyalty to Germany or in Greece where the lack of official allowance for the term ‘Turkish’ has caused quite some controversy, the word ‘Turkmen’ was simply acknowledged by the Iraqi Turks without any contest.
There is a good reason for that. The Turkic population today known as the ‘Turkmens’, although they did not possess the same ethnonym at the time, formed the overwhelming majority of the Turkic migration to the Near East. The people who during the ninth century were called the Oghuz and those called the Turkmens(or, as the more Byzantine version of the term went, the Turkomans) by the eleventh and twelfth century were the same people, and although the Turkmen ethnonym gradually fell out of use for the Turkic population of the Near East afterwards, that didn’t make the people any differently. The same people that the Iraqi junta renamed to Turkmens were people who, centuries ago, were called Turkmens anyway before that term fell out of use.
So, the Iraqi Turks pretty much went ‘okay, we’re Turkmens now… so? Is that supposed to be different?’, and in terms of the national consciousness or identity of the Iraqi Turkmens, pretty much nothing changed because of that.
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Besides, the ethnic people who are a continuation of the Oghuz line (who also include Yörüks) are also called Türkmens and they call themselves Türkmens as well. Similarly, Polish immigrants (and their descendants) may choose to call themselves British-Poles.
If they are the continuation of the sane line, why do people in Turkemenstan look different from Turks in Turkey ? Very simple answer , they don’t belong the same line. People in Central Asia has nothing to do with people in The modern Turkey except sharing some similarities in language. The idea of
… (more)Yelda SamanciThere are many Turkic tribes and they look different. Oguz Turks are sharing genes, customs, traditions, history and language with each other Turkic people don’t look the same all around Asia and in Europe, because they have been mixed with other Turkic tribes and peoples like the descendants of Hittites ( Anatolian local people) Bulgarians, Hungarians, Albanians, Circassians, Laz, Persians etc. Turkish Turks have no genetic connection with armenians! Armenians have been mixed with arabs but also assyrians and to a very little extent kurds due to the geographical concentration of armenians to the east and south east Anatolia. The reason why you think that Turkic people look different among themselves becomes easy to understand if you divide Turkic people in 2 makor groups: Caucasoid and Mongoloid. Obviously those one who have more of Mongoloud look more Chinese while those Turkic people who have more Caucasoid in them look Caucasian.
‘Centrist extremism’? The Reichsbanner wasn’t made up of extreme centrists- if it had been, they’d be fascists, and while the Reichsbanner got that insult thrown on it by the Communists often, that doesn’t make it true.
Fundamentally, the Reichsbanner was formed in a republic that was already dying since the day of its birth. Any hopes that maybe, after the Spartacist revolts of 1920, that peace and order would come to Germany was then dashed in 1923, when the Weimar house of cards came within a hair of complete collapse.
The year opened with German economy collapsing under the choking weight of Versailles reparations, regularly defaulted on payments, and France and Belgium proceeded to invade the Ruhr basin to extract payment forcibly.
The combination of the economic burden of the Ruhr’s loss, and the payments that had to be made to the workers of the Ruhr, called into a general strike by the government against the occupation, proved devastating. The German economy, already collapsing, went into freefall. Over the year 1923, German mark became worthless, with one mark’s value being nearly three hundred million times less at the end of the year than it was at the start.
In August, millions of workers, spurred on by the KPD, went into strike against the government. The Cuno cabinet collapsed, and he was replaced by Gustav Stresemann as Reichskanzler.
Then came the month of October. It opened with elements of former Freikorps, still supported by the army, attempting a putsch against the government. The army and their former friends came to blows, and the Küstrin garrison suppressed the putsch. Before the end of the month, thousands of KPD members revolted in Hamburg, stormed police precincts, tried to declare a Soviet state, and the revolt was rapidly broken by the police. And on 8 November, a certain Adolf tried to organize a putsch against the Bavarian state government in a certain beer hall in Münich, and was beaten back by the police and an army regiment.
All this gave the Weimar moderates a very clear message. The KPD, the nationalist DNVP, and the slowly growing National Socialists all walked around with large paramilitaries they were willing to use. Der Stahlhelm, Roter Frontkämpferbund, and the brown-shirted Sturmabteilung prowled the streets. Against all these, if it came to blows, the Social Democrats and their associates could only rely on the Army: and that only partially. The Junker military and the Social Democrats had been at odds ever since the days of the Kaiser, and now worked together out of nothing beyond an acquaintance of convenience born out of mutual fear and worry against the communists and the fledgling National Socialists.
The Reichsbanner was born in early 1924 out of this fact. The organization officially was above party lines, and its only ideology armed defense of the Weimar democracy, but in reality it was overwhelmingly composed of Social Democrats, with some contribution from moderate centrist Zentrum and the left-liberal Deutsche Demokratische Partei. Officially, it was a veterans’ association, just like its conservative nationalist counterpart Der Stahlhelm, and its members were overwhelmingly veterans of the Great War. Like all of the Weimar paramilitaries, they were primarily made up of genuine ideologues, but of course there were people who just wanted to fight.
Between Weimar’s paramilitaries, the Reichsbanner had one of the most worthy causes, and admittedly, was one of the more restrained in use of violence- especially after the somewhat moderate head of DNVP, Kuno von Westarp, was replaced by the radical Hugenberg which then led to radicalization in the DNVP-dominated Der Stahlhelm. But the tragedy of it was that noble though the Reichsbanner’s goal seemed, it was doomed to failure: the Reichsbanner defended a dysfunctional democracy, one that slid further into collapsing under its own weight every passing day. They could delay it, but eventually the Weimar democracy would die: the question was only who would bury it.
As it was, it was Hitler who became the undertaker of the Weimar democracy- within less than a month of his rise to power, the Reichsbanner was no more, and most of its highest leadership was being hunted down.
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The Weimar Republic still might have had a shot at survival if not for the Great Depression. After 1929 it was finished. It’s a tragedy that the worst of all the available options is what did finally end it.
Indeed. Of the available options, the DNVP would be the closest to a good one, as it had the possibility of returning to Westarp's saner ways if someone were to get rid of Hugenberg and even Hugenberg was no Nazi. Communist role would have been a catastrophe for Germany, but nobody other than the co
… (more)Luke HathertonIf the Nazis had failed to get into power and gone bankrupt as they were on the verge of doing in 1933, a military putsch was probably an eventuality. That would have been the least bad option. If Hindenburg hadn’t been quite so old and incapacitated in the 1930s, he wouldn’t have let Hitler near the chancellorship and might have ordered a putsch himself. From what I have heard, Hindenburg was by far the most popular politician while he was alive, far more popular than Hitler, and he commanded the loyalty of the army and many of the men in the paramilitary forces as well.
Because Austria-Hungary didn’t have a national flag.
Your image links are missing, but I’m sure that the ‘first flag’ you mention is this:
You are absolutely correct that this flag, introduced in 1869, is not the Austro-Hungarian national flag: this was a naval ensign, used only by the merchant marine. But the reason this is used by many places to represent Austria-Hungary is the simple: there was no national flag to use.
Austria-Hungary, legally, wasn’t one country: it was two, arguably three countries under a personal union. Austrian and Hungarian citizenship was separate. The two countries issued their own passports- and Croatia also issued its own passports. Their central governments were separate, their budgets were separate(except in military and diplomatic expenditures), and they signed commercial treaties independent of each other. Their judicial systems were separate as well(and again, Croatia had its own).
And as ought to be expected of two states that didn’t have common citizenship, finances, government or justice system, they didn’t have a common flag.
The flag of the Habsburg Monarchy, the yellow-and-black old flag of the Austrian Empire, was still in use: but it only applied to the Cisleithanian part of Austria-Hungary(that is, all of it except Hungary and Croatia). For the Transleithanian part, it was even worse: Hungary and Croatia both had their separate flags, and per the 1868 settlement between the two, both had to be flown together.
So, if you want to represent Austria-Hungary with flags, you have to fly three separate flags simultaneously.
The three flags of Austria-Hungary: for Austria, Hungary, and Croatia-Slavonia.
Understandably, most places where a single flag would be used to represent a country find it a little tricky to give a country three flags back-to-back instead. Thus, everyone defaults to the merchant marine ensign: because that flag may not be the state flag, but it is the only Austro-Hungarian flag that on its own stands for the entire country.
So, the merchant ensign it is.
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One small thing: the Hungarian flag with the angels was an alternative version, only in use between 1915 and 1918. After the kiegyezés (the compromise; der Ausgleich) in 1867, this was the longest-serving national flag of Hungary:
And all the others until 1915 were basically variations of this with l
… (more)Thanks for the correction-I’ll edit the flag.
I'm actually really happy I stumbled across this answer. I never actually researched or realized what the dynamics of Austria-Hungary were
Yes.
The 1949 Geneva Convention clearly states the following, with regards to ‘persons taking no active part in the hostilities, including members of armed forces who have laid down their arms and those placed hors de combat by sickness, wounds, detention, or any other cause’:
The following acts are and shall remain prohibited at any time and in any place whatsoever with respect to the above-mentioned persons:
- violence to life and person, in particular murder of all kinds, mutilation, cruel treatment and torture;
- taking of hostages;
- outrages upon personal dignity, in particular, humiliating and degrading treatment;
- the passing of sentences and the carrying out of executions without previous judgment pronounced by a regularly constituted court affording all the judicial guarantees which are recognized as indispensable by civilized peoples.
There is not a single exception to this. None. Nil.
Under no circumstances possible is it legal under binding international law to kill an enemy soldier who has laid down his arms and surrendered. No, not even that one you are thinking of. You cannot do it for punishment, you cannot do it for reprisals, you cannot do it for revenge. The only circumstances in which it is legally permissible for you to shoot at a prisoner of war is if he attempts to escape, and you can only do that during the escape, in order to stop him, and as a last resort measure. If he is recaptured, you cannot have him shot for punishment. Not even if this is his twenty-seventh time escaping.
So yes. It is a war crime- as clear cut as any. Oh, and before you think, ‘what if we don’t accept his surrender? He’s not a prisoner if we do not take him as a prisoner!’, giving no quarter is also a war crime under the 1899 Hague Conventions.
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It takes a great deal of discipline and self-restraint to refrain from killing enemy POWs for the sake of revenge, especially if the POWs are comrades of those who kill your comrades in the most brutal manner.
I thought there was one more exception — when accepting the surrender poses a danger to the receiving group. Such as in the Pacific theater in World War 2, where “surrendering” Japanese would routinely attempt to detonate grenades when allied soldiers would approach them.
Not an exception under international law, I’m afraid.
Of course, if you do realize what is happening is something to that end, then enemy soldiers doing this no longer count as surrendering troops because well, they aren’t. But you need to know this is true for the specific group: you cannot assume t
… (more)Calling the reorganization into the 1941 Panzer Division organization an ‘adequate’ solution to the woes of the Panzertruppen would be heavily understating it.
It is often stated that Germans were the only ones who went into World War 2 prepared to fight the next war rather than the previous, and while this is not a statement wholly without merit, it’s a gross overstatement. Fact of the matter is, as late as 1932 the only ‘tanks’ in the German army were wooden and fabric contraptions meant for demonstration and exercise purposes, and the doctrine of armored warfare in the Wehrmacht, as it was everywhere else, was still a brand new conception with many a teething problem that had to be ironed out.
One problem starkly evidenced in France was that there were simply too many tanks in German Panzer divisions, and not enough in the name of artillery, infantry, or transport to support them. Admittedly, some of this was stemming from the fact that many of these divisions just weren’t up to their intended strength: five of the ten missed one of their two infantry regiments, seven of the ten lacked a heavy artillery company, and four of the ten didn’t actually have their second Panzer regiment.
Even then, this was made clear in the campaign, especially in the 1., 2. and 3. Panzer, which didn’t actually have their second infantry regiment but had both their Panzer regiments. To use these divisions as a worst case example, although these divisions had 854 tanks(not counting any other self propelled guns- only tanks) between the three of them, they only had 126 artillery pieces(including infantry guns, but not mortars), 153 37mm AT guns, 60 20mm barrels, 630 tons of divisional truck transport, and nine battalions of infantry.
That is not a lot.
Germans didn’t simply reduce the number of tank regiments in a Panzer division in preparation for 1941- the Panzer divisions’ existing deficiencies in their orders of battle were rectified, and significant amounts of support units: four new divisional transport columns, one motor maintenance company, one fuel transport column, and a heavy artillery battalion were added, infantry battalions were enlarged, some were mounted on armored halftracks. Rifle squads in motorized infantry formations were given another machine gun, and their superior formations were embedded with more engineers.
We cannot exactly use the Barbarossa situation of the aforementioned three divisions to compare, because as of 22 June 1941 2. Panzer-Division was freshly returned from the Balkans and didn’t actually have any tanks: all of its tanks were sent to factory overhaul or to other frontline units. But we’ll substitute in the 4. Panzer-Division in its place, which was accompanying 3. Panzer as part of XXIV. Armeekorps. These three divisions starting Barbarossa only had 536 tanks between them, compared to the 854 up above. But they had 180 artillery pieces(up from 126), 153 AT guns of 37mm or larger(same as 1940), 76 20mm barrels(up from 60, quadruple guns count for four), 1230 tons of divisional truck transport(up from 630), twelve strong battalions of infantry(with eight halftrack-mounted companies out of the 36 companies).
So, in these three-division groupings, on an available-per-tank basis, the amount of artillery has more than doubled, the amount of AT guns has increased more than fifty percent, the amount of 20mm guns has doubled, the amount of divisional truck transport more than tripled, and the amount of infantry just over doubled.
Every single tank in a 1941 Panzer division, on average, received about twice the infantry, artillery, AT and logistical support compared to what they had access to in 1940- and as a result, far from weakening the Panzer divisions as an apparent reduction in tank number seems to do, the reorganization increased their combat power several times. Combined with the inherent reinforcement of existing support units(like the increase in armored halftracks and tanks compared to trucks in signal and pioneer units, or the extra MG given to motorized infantry squads) and the decrease in numbers of Panzer I and II’s(57 percent of the tank inventory of frontline Panzer divisions in 10 May 1940, down to 27 percent at the start of Barbarossa), this meant a 1941 Panzer division was several times stronger than a 1940 one.
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Had, for one reason or another, Zhukov’s Siberian troops had been delayed or stopped from traveling to the eastern front during Barbarossa, would the Battle of Moscow has gone differently?
‘Zhukov’s Siberian troops’ weren’t a thing- or at least, not in the sense you are thinking of.
From the start of Barbarossa to the end of 1941, a total of 28 divisions were transferred from the Eastern to Western Soviet Union: defining these terms as the Ural, Central Asian, Siberian and Transbaikal Military Districts as well as the Far Eastern Front comprising the ‘eastern USSR’ while all the rest(Leningrad, Odessa, Transcaucasus, Kharkov, Arkhangelsk, Moscow, Orel, North Caucasus and Volga Military Districts and Kiev, Western and Baltic Special Military Districts) comprising the ‘western USSR’. Roughly, we are dividing it just west of the Urals.
The single largest transfer happened in what little remained of the month of June, in which eleven divisions were sent west. Two were the 59. Tank and 69. Mechanized Divisions, both from the Far Eastern Front and both were committed by early July. The other nine were very much Siberian divisions: nine rifle divisions, part of the Stavka reserve but located in the Ural and Siberian Military Districts. All nine were originally formed in the Siberian Military District.
But all nine of these divisions sent west were also deployed to the frontline by July. By the time of the Moscow battle, they were already much reduced: two of them were then destroyed in the Vyazma-Bryansk Pocket, and by the time the German assault slowed down the remaining seven, already too weak to be proper divisions, were probably each numbering little more than a battalion.
In July, three more divisions went: 194. Mountain Rifle, 21. Mountain Cavalry, and 221. Mechanized, all three from the Central Asian Military District. Most of those divisions were made up of a mix of Russians and the Turkic majority of the Soviet Central Asia: they reached the front in July, and by the time October rolled around again they were little more than skeletons.
This leaves us with the 14 divisions, transferred from August to December. Of these, five were divisions originally raised in(and therefore comprised of personnel from) the Far Eastern Front, three were from the Transbaikal Military District, three were from the Central Asian Military District, and only three were from the Siberian Military District- the only ones to have a majority of ‘Siberian’ personnel. It’s possible that we can count the men from the Transbaikal District as ‘Siberian’ as well, which gives us six Siberian divisions.
Of these six, three(21st, 114th and 65th Rifle Divisions) were sent either to the 4th Army in the Volkhov area, or the 7th Army in Karelia. This leaves us with exactly three Siberian divisions, 32nd and 93rd Rifle and 82. Mechanized, that arrived roughly in the Moscow area early enough to participate in the Battle of Moscow, but late enough to not have been basically annihilated around Smolensk or at the early disaster at Vyazma. Of these three, only one of them actually distinguished itself by any special performance as the Siberian troops were oft credited with: that being the 32nd Rifle Division.
Not even the mid-Barbarossa mobilization wave of fresh troops flooded into the Western Front count: those aren’t quite ‘transfers’ as they went straight west as soon as they were raised as opposed to being existing troops transferred west to help in the emergency. Six divisions of mainly Siberian personnel were raised in 1941, and all six were deployed in the Volkhov Front.
Had Zhukov’s ‘Siberians’ been delayed, the defenders of Moscow would have lacked three fresh divisions- certainly that wouldn’t have been particularly pleasant, but in a Soviet defensive force of thirteen brigades and 98 divisions at the start of October, I don’t think it would be tide-turning.
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· At that point in the war the lack of just one division would have had significant consequences. It was such a closely fought affair. Everything missing or added had non-linear consequences.
The term you are looking for, which most people aren’t very familiar with, is ‘Diabolus ex Machina’.
It’s exactly as it says: instead of a god from the machine to come and fix the mess our heroes are in, a demon from the machine comes out to put them into a mess. Sometimes, the term ‘Deus ex Machina’ is incorrectly used for these as well, but that is an incorrect usage: a Deus ex Machina is strictly a solution to a problem, while Diabolus ex Machina is the cause of a problem.
Diabolus ex Machina is a rarer criticism than Deus ex Machina, both because it isn’t known as well as Deus ex Machina, and because a problem that arises out of nowhere is usually not seen as egregious as a solution out of nowhere. But both are exactly as much of a cop-out, and both of them are best avoided.
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Another, an anime/manga/novel (written in the reverse of that order) is actually pretty much entirely about this. I don’t know that it’s necessarily a cop-out in the case either, since it basically comes down to all the characters being really unlucky (some of them are also astonishingly stupid, tho
… (more)That’s interesting that it’s not complained about it as much — we expect sudden problems, but not sudden solutions. Such is life.
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It was a demonstration of his success, a demonstration born of his arrogance.
Reinhard Heydrich was sent to the Protectorate to rein it in: to obliterate the Czech resistance, to end the Czech unrest, to put an end to sabotage and improve compliance and production. These, he did to exceptional success. Heydrich’s carrot and stick politics simultaneously made the Czechs fond of if not Heydrich, then at least the concessions and gifts he bestowed to secure their loyalties, and simultaneously fearful of what Heydrich would do if his wrath was ever roused.
Heydrich worked hard to better the conditions for the Czechs living in the Protectorate, and simultaneously constantly reminded everyone of the sword of Damocles that would fall on the disobedient, with regular and well-publicized executions of resistance members and black market profiteers. As a result, many Czechs either didn’t want him removed from rule over the Protectorate(not out of love or loyalty, per se, but out of knowledge that he was the best ruler they were ever likely to get), or were simply too afraid of what would happen in reprisal if Heydrich was killed- or, God forbid, survived an attempt to kill him.
Heydrich was well aware of this success he’d had: the success of the Czech resistance withering on the vine, of sabotage dropping massively, of unrest falling and compliance rising.
And make no mistake- Heydrich was no fool. Instead, he was probably the smartest man in the Party’s upper echelons, with immense drive, intelligence and cunning. But he had another set of traits equally prominent: he was immensely prideful, boundlessly arrogant, and vain as a peacock.
It didn’t just serve to Heydrich that he had, with generosity or with fear, subjugated Bohemia-Moravia to the Reich. He had to bask in it.
Heydrich in Prague, in full dress uniform: complete with his Pilot’s Badge, Front Flying Clasp, Iron Cross, Golden Party Badge, and other decorations.
That was what Heydrich’s drive in that car was about. It wasn’t the first time he did it: him traveling in an open topped staff car, only accompanied by his driver, was a regular thing in the Protectorate. Heydrich was a king in his little domain, touring his kingdom and his subjects, none of whom, whether adoring or fearful, would ever dare to raise a hand against him. This was the sort of gesture no head of German occupation would dare anywhere else in the Reich’s occupied territories: but Heydrich knew his domain was no mere occupied territory. It was wholly beholden to his will, and no soul would even dare contemplate attacking him, and he felt confident enough in his belief that this was the case that he was comfortable putting his own life in the hands of that fact.
And the funny thing is, though Heydrich had been painfully vain, though his arrogance had clouded his sound judgment, he had been right. Nobody in the Protectorate would dare lay one hostile hand on him. When Heydrich’s assassins made contact with their Resistance contacts in Prague, those contacts, once they learned that the plan was to kill Heydrich, begged the assassins not to: not because the resistance had any love for the Hangman, but because they rightly feared the dreadful consequences.
But Heydrich’s self-confidence, though well founded in reality, had one critical flaw. He had been wholly sure that no subject of the Protectorate would dare exploit his deliberate self-exposure, and he was right in that. But in that day of May 1942, the people who came for him were no subjects of his: they were commandos smuggled in from Britain, following the orders of a government in London.
Did Heydrich underestimate the ability of the British to smuggle in a team of assassins to Prague? Or did he overestimate how much the terrible threat of German reprisal would faze those who would be giving orders to any such team of assassins, who, indeed let alone being fazed by that threat, deliberately sought to provoke it? We can hardly ask the man which was the case, or maybe whether it was a combination of the two.
Or maybe, Heydrich did foresee the possibility- yet, in mocking self-awareness of his immense vanity, still chose to take the risk and keep driving in an open car with only a driver to protect him. Heydrich was the master of the Protectorate: had he wished, he could go anywhere in an armored halftack, with a whole company of trained soldiers in escort, and with every road he was scheduled to cross being cleared of vehicles and men hours in advance. Had he done so, he’d have been alive: but he’d have communicated only fear. Fear, worry, and an absent faith in the success of his methods.
Mayhaps, Heydrich was aware of the risk he’d been taking, and yet he knowingly kept doing it, dragged along by the strength of an immense arrogance he’d been mockingly aware of, yet lacked the power to resist. We will never know.
But the fact of the matter is, Heydrich had been wholly right in his trust that not one soul who lived under the Protectorate would dare harm him- unfortunately for the Man with the Iron Heart, the men who came for him weren’t subjects of the Protectorate, and his skin was not as iron as his heart was.
And thus, in almost an anticlimax, the architect of the Holocaust, the spider at the heart of the RSHA, the dreaded Butcher of Prague, was no more.
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Had Heydrich never been assassinated/attempted to be assassinated, what do you think he would have done for the rest of the war?
Keep doing his job, rip a new one at Nuremberg, and be one hell of a Christmas decoration.
Continue to do what he was paid for, liquidate Jews, communists, gays, gypsies, resistance members etc, and then be given sanctuary by the Americans in order to teach them how to do it
so, it was just another act of british terrorism? looks like preparation to mass-bombing of german cities.
Hardly. For one, the first British bombing of German territory happened in September 1939, major targeting of civilian or civilian-proximity installations began on May 1940, and the first deliberate terror raid of the war in Europe was the December 1940 bombing of Mannheim. Heydrich’s assassination
… (more)Because a Q-ship’s success relies on your opponent being suicidally chivalrous.
A Q-ship is built on the fact that a submarine would rather surface and sink a merchant ship with its deck gun instead of just torpedoing it, both to save its limited supply of torpedoes and out of classic naval chivalry to let the enemy civilian merchantmen board lifeboats. The theory was that if you built guns into a merchant ship and concealed them, a submarine that found that ship would surface to take the ship’s surrender as usual, the Q-ship could then brandish its guns and absolutely murder the surfaced submarine standing just a few hundred meters away.
The idea is sound, on paper: once a Q-ship drops the panels hiding its gunnery with a submarine on the surface that close, that submarine is screwed. There is only one flaw.
In a matter of months, your enemy is going to find out what you’re doing. And when he does, the only way your Q-ship ruse will continue to work is if the enemy submarines are stupid enough to surface despite knowing that Q-ships exist. Almost certainly, they will not- instead, they will treat every merchantman as a Q-ship, and sink a bunch of torpedoes into it.
And that’s exactly what happened. German submarines, not willing to suicide by Q-ship and not really feeling all that chivalrous after the Baralong Incident treated every Allied merchantman as the Q-ship it might have been, and just torpedoed it. The British fielded 366 Q-ships over the course of the war, a sixth were sunk, and collectively all those ships only sank eighteen U-boats.
The concept was a dismal failure that killed far more British merchant crew in ships German submarines were no longer able to give quarter to than it did German submariners.
The Q-ship HMS Baralong, during World War I. Baralong was one of the few successful Q-ships, having sunk two German U-boats. Unfortunately, it was also one of the most infamous, for having shot survivors in the water and executed a German boarding party that had surrendered without resistance aboard a merchant ship in its first submarine sinking, and having deliberately rammed a German lifeboat in the second. The Baralong Incident proved to be the final nail in the coffin of naval chivalry.
This wasn’t a flaw in the British sailors or ships, but a fundamental flaw of the concept: whoever used Q-ships always had it end in dismal failure. The Germans commissioned six to operate in the Baltic, and the best they achieved between the six of them was to heavily damage a Russian submarine. In the Second World War, the British commissioned nine in 1939- two were sunk eight days apart in 1940 by submarines they never spotted, which led to the rest being reverted to merchant service. The Japanese tested out one, which ran into the submerged submarine USS Swordfish and promptly ate three torpedoes from her. The US fielded five in the Atlantic, none of which ever saw a single submarine, although one was sunk on its first patrol by a German U-boat. It was even worse in the Pacific, where the only Q-ship to cause any real damage on submarines was one that depth charged two friendly submarines.
The only time where ships that were equipped in Q-ship fashion actually proved successful military vessels was when they weren’t used as Q-ships, but as merchant raiders: going along in the guise of a neutral merchantman until they spotted a lone enemy merchant ship or a particularly weak warship. Examples include Seeadler, Möwe and Wolf in World War I, which sunk or captured 320.000 GRT of shipping between the three of them, or the twelve Hilfskreuzer of World War II with a total tally of 800.000 GRT. These, of course, weren’t Q-ships, though similarly built and equipped, and the difference showed in the results.
German Hilfskreuzer Pinguin in the Indian Ocean, 1941. Pinguin was the first of the twelve to be sunk, being caught and sunk by the County-class heavy cruiser HMS Cornwall. Despite lasting less than a year, the Pinguin had burned bright and fast: with a total sunk or captured tally of 154.710 GRT, it would be the most successful of all the Hilfskreuzers.
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It’s almost like they were trying to provoke unrestricted submarine warfare, to have a pretext to drag the USA into WWI, much as Lord Grey and Edward House spent so much time discussing.
Excellent answer.
The rational far as I can tell was that losing more sailors but saving more ships (torpedo attack was vastly more difficult and depending on luck) was acceptable price fo pay.
David MassieWhich Is really the right choice to make if you are a country at war.
Some Q-ships were very successful at what they were intended to do.
The German ship Atlantis sank or captured 22 allied merchant ships before she herself was sunk by the British cruiser HMS Devonshire.
Atlantis
Plans of Atlantis showing the armament, up a 75 mm gun on the foredeck.
Most U-boats weren’t
… (more)Yes, but the German Hilfskreuzer weren’t Q-ships. A Q-ship is an armed merchantman disguised as an unarmed merchant ships for use as a submarine trap. Merchant raiders aren’t Q-ships.
Michael McMeelYou are being unnecessarily restrictive in your definitions. The hilfskreuzer were in form virtually identical to Q-ships, having their armament hidden to pose as unarmed ships, and modifications to superstructure to minimize identification. In function, they worked exactly the same as Q-ships, using their innocent appearance to approach wary opponents more closely than they would normally be allowed. Tactically, there is no difference between a Q-ship ambushing a U-boat and the Kormoran ambushing HMAS Sydney. The only difference is that the hilfskreuzer had a lot more targets. The only forces the Germans had left at sea were U-boats. Q-ships were ineffective, but only in the sense that hiding their armaments was unnecessary. Armed merchantmen were just as effective at forcing U-boats to remain submerged. In WWI, even a couple of 4-inch guns would outgun a U-boat, and in WWII ships like Jervis Bay and Beaverford could significantly impede the operations of even heavy surface raiders.
You can see a model of the Goldenfels, aka Atlantis, at the Maritime Museum in Halifax.
Patrick CroleyOh thanks. I hadn’t noticed that that was the original name for Atlantis.
Is it?
We’re talking about the unit responsible for making sure the division’s communications with all its subordinate and superior units are intact, with every means necessary.
For one, this is an armored division, thus, the signal unit has to be entirely motorized, so there’s no small amount of drivers and maintenance personnel involved, as well as transport for supplies, fuel, batteries and parts. For two, this unit needs to run communications for an entire division with radios and phones: it can hardly be a handful of men, can it?
But let us dive into the anatomy of that signal battalion, and decide whether it is too much. Just what were those men doing? For most of 1942, the Panzer division signal battalion consisted of four sub elements: the battalion headquarters, the radio company, the telephone company, and the supply column.
The smallest part was the HQ, consisting of a maintenance section and the actual HQ. The maintenance section consisted of two personnel carriers and two cross-country load carriers(one for maintenance equipment, the other carried spares and other supplies and was also used to tow things), and a motorcycle equipped with a side car. Twelve people were employed here: five drivers(four for each vehicle and one for the motorcycle), the unit leader, and eight mechanics(one electrician, one smith and welder, and six motor mechanics), two of whom pulled double duty as the aforementioned drivers.
The HQ part consisted of two cross-country load carriers and three personnel carriers, along with two motorcycles. 28 people were in this HQ section: two motorcyclists, five drivers, the commander, his adjutant and first sergeant, the battalion’s paymaster, two rations officers and a civilian signaleer, two stretcher bearers, three clerks, a cook, two draughtsmen, two messengers, two armorers, one saddle-maker, and a radioman.
The radio company consisted of a ten-man headquarters(with two motorcycles, a truck and a personnel carrier), a three-ton ration truck with two people, a ten-man motor maintenance section, a supply column of 19 people(two fuel trucks, two field kitchens, a battery recharging van, a personnel carrier and a motorcycle), a crew reserve of 19 people, and of course the three actual radio platoons: platoons that, between them, had three platoon headquarters of five men each, 18 armored radio sections of 8 men each(each consisting of a Sd. Kfz. 263 radio-mounted armored car and a Kfz. 17 or 15 car), two Sd. Kfz. 260 light armored cars with radios with 8 more men in total, a radio halftrack with five crew, and three radio tanks with three crew each. With 241 people, a hefty chunk of the manpower in a signal battalion came from the radio company.
The telephone company had a similar broad organization, but a lot lighter: instead of armored cars, telephone units were mounted in soft-skinned cross-country cars and load carriers. There were no tanks, the maintenance section was much smaller, and a crew reserve, which was primarily meant for the tanks in the radio company, didn’t exist in the telephone company. Thus, it only numbered 159 people.
And finally, the ‘Light Panzer Signal Column’ was the element responsible for keeping and transporting the majority of spare gear for the signal battalion. It consisted of a single car for its commander and the staff, a single motorcycle, and nine load carriers(trucks or cross country load carriers) carrying radio, phone and cable supplies, fuel, switchboard equipment, a battery recharging van and a signal workshop. This all had another 30 people.
By mid-1942, the authorized table of organization of a Panzer signal battalion was a hefty 470 people. It consisted of not merely radio operators, but telephone operators, administrative staff, drivers and operators for all the vehicles in it, maintenance personnel for not only all the sophisticated electronic equipment but also the vehicles themselves, cooks, armorers, clerks, messengers, and others.
For the workload it had to tackle running the communications of an entire division, it certainly wasn’t overstaffed. It might take one man to operate a radio or telephone: but there were a lot of phones and radios, and there were a lot of vehicles for those to be driven around, and a lot of cable that had to be laid and positions to set up, a lot of men to cook for, a lot of vehicles that had to be repaired and maintained, fueled, a lot of signal analysts and typists and coding operators and all manner of other specialists, and a lot of administrative work to take care of nearly five hundred men.
Effective communications is the blood of effective maneuver warfare. Better your signal battalion be too large than too small.
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Never realized how many motorcycles German divisions had. Always thought they were only in the Reconnaissance unit. (Aufklarungs Abteillung I think?)
Yep.
There were 527 motorcycles in a 1. Welle infantry division of 1939, 201 of which were with sidecars. The Panzer divisions had more than 1400.
An informative answer indeed.
What was the strength and structure of the signals unit in contemporary army field formations? Yes, it can differ from country to country.
Usually, German ones were among the largest. The signal battalion of a 1944 Soviet rifle division only numbered 144 people, and that of the tank corps weren’t much bigger. 1944 US armored division had an overgrown company of 268 men. The British had large signal units: the Guards Armored Division in
… (more)Honestly, I can’t believe how people somehow manage to doubt that the YPG is, at the very least, inextricably tied to PKK.
YPG is the armed wing of the PYD, the ‘Democratic Union Party’, which along with PKK as well as the PÇDK in Iraq and PJAK in Iran, a part of the umbrella organization of KCK(Kurdistan Communities Union).
- The honorary leader of said umbrella organization, of which PYD and by extension YPG is a part of, is Abdullah Öcalan, the founder of PKK.
- The two Co-Chairpersons of said umbrella organization are Cemil Bayık, one of the three members of the PKK’s Executive Committee, and Bese Hozat, a member of the PKK’s General Presidential Council. Before Hozat, that position was held by Murat Karayılan, a fellow member of the Executive Committee alongside Bayık and the commander of the PKK’s armed wing.
- The official philosophy was literally penned down by the aforementioned founder of the PKK.
The YPG is voluntarily part of an umbrella group that includes the PKK, that exalts the founder of the PKK as its great leader, that is led by the literal same people who lead the PKK, was described as and I quote ‘the Syrian militia of the PKK’ by the US Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats(come on, guys, if you’re going to support them against us, at least pretend to not realize that fact), but apparently it isn’t a branch of or even affiliated with the PKK and it’s Turkish propaganda if you say otherwise.
Really?
Honestly, I don’t see how I am supposed to define something that follows PKK’s ideology, praises PKK’s founder, and is ultimately subordinate to PKK’s leaders as anything other than ‘a branch of PKK’- and that is a rather generous interpretation. Even calling it a branch is probably an understatement, because even that implies some form of divergence: it’s probably much closer to being the same goddamn tree.
I don’t know what reasoning you lot follow, but as far as I am aware of, there’s this saying in English: if it looks like a duck, swims like a duck and quacks like a duck, it’s probably a duck.
And if it follows PKK’s ideology and methodology, if it exalts PKK’s founder, if it is led by superiors who are PKK’s direct leaders, I dare say it is very much a branch of PKK.
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Please allow me to clear up a confusion:
- The PKK is designated a terrorist organisation by the United States.
- The US supports an organisation (the YPG) directly linked to the PKK.
- In other words, the US is supporting a party directly allied with an organisation it thinks is a terrorist organisation?
Wha
… (more)Yes. That is exactly what is going on.
The alliance between Turkey and US has been reduced to a scrap of paper for quite a few years now.
Ahmet CaliskanCem, USA and Turkey are allies in NATO. However they have some oppising positions as well. USA and Turkey are good allies. Some opposiite positions are normal. Imagine the British. USA supported IRA (the UK equivelant of PKK) for many years and the USA called UK as its closest ally simultaneously. Strategic positions evolve and may hurt in the short term. Alliances like USA and Turkey are not easy to build, and sometimes difficult to maintain, but nevertheless very important and beneficial for both, maybe especially for Turkey.
It is actually not that complicated, once someone tells the ground facts in Syria, impartially.
- USA and Turkey are allies in NATO.
- All NATO countries were against Asad ruling Syria. However when Russia decided to support him, NATO could not dare a direct confrontation with Asad or Russia.
- Many NATO cou
Many “peaceful “ movements find it useful to have military wings whose actions they can deny, don’t they?
They did name bases after WW2 generals.
Dozens of past and present German military bases are named after WW2 military personnel. Some were renamed after the Cold War: military bases named after people including mountaineer generals Eduard Dietl, Rudolf Konrad and Ludwig Kübler, Luftwaffe ace Werner Mölders, Generalmajor Hans Hüttner, former Chief of the General Staff Werner von Fritsch, AA artillery general Günther Rüdel, Generalleutnant Hans von Sponeck, and Friedrich Fahnert, a general of the Luftwaffe communication troops, were renamed. The storm of renaming places named after people Germany decided it no longer liked also took with itself a number of places named after people who had nothing to do with the Nazis, including Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck, Hermann von der Lieth-Thomsen and Max von Gallwitz.
Still, even today, there are Bundeswehr facilities named after people like the infantry general Adelbert Schulz, military doctor Peter Bamm, Luftwaffe aces Hans-Joachim Marseille and Johannes Steinhoff, war hero sergeant Diedrich Lilienthal, and the aforementioned Günther Rüdel(who, after the hysteria that gotten the barracks named after him renamed, was rehabilitated with deeper research into the matter). Indeed, the Rommel example is interesting, because there are, as far as I know, two barracks in Germany still named after Rommel.
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Lettow-Vorbeck? The guy who told Hitler to go fuck himself? Why would they want to take his name off anything? He was a hero in WW1 and after it.
Who knows. I certainly don’t.
Four barracks in Germany at various times were named after him. There was one in Bremen built in the thirties, whose fate I don’t know, there’s one still named after him(I believe) in Bad Segeberg and another in Hamburg both of which are currently decommissioned(in 2008
… (more)John CateA set of plastic toy soldiers has more meaning or tradition than the modern Bundeswehr.
There are three barracks named after Rommel:
Rommel-Kaserne in Dornstadt, Rommel-Kaserne in Osterode am Harz, and the Generalfeldmarshall-Rommel-Kaserne in Augustdorf.
Edit: The original wording of this answer was rather too harsh towards Harris, mostly with regards to his personal morals and ideals. It’s been edited in places to be more neutral and more factual.
Because he didn’t. He really didn’t.
There are two things that has to be understood about Harris to understand his performance in the air war: one, Harris was an immensely arrogant person, with a devoted, single-minded determination to his way being the right way. Two, Harris had a very cold-hearted approach to the campaign he commanded. He didn’t see civilians as any less combatants than soldiers in the front were. The man had a single objective: kill as many German civilians as he could, and turn as many German cities to rubble as was within his power.
I’m not saying this here to moralize about Harris’ campaign- I’m neither going to praise his self-righteous ‘reap the whirlwind!’ nonsense here, nor do I intend to condemn his campaign for its toll of civilian victims. If you’re looking for an analysis of the morality of WW2 strategic bombing, look elsewhere. But I have to clarify Harris’ outlook into the question of Germany, because that had very important repercussions for the strategic conduct of the air war.
Harris had one objective he set himself. German cities had to be bombed. The target of the Allied air offensives weren’t to be industrial areas or railyards or U-boat pens: they were going to be the German people. In Harris’ own words, the objective was ‘the destruction of German cities, the killing of German workers, and the disruption of civilised life throughout Germany ... the destruction of houses, public utilities, transport and lives, the creation of a refugee problem on an unprecedented scale, and the breakdown of morale both at home and at the battle fronts by fear of extended and intensified bombing’. That was the principal goal.

The dead piled up at Dresden. One of the most controversial air raids of the war, Dresden was also among the most famous, and the most deadly. Picture from the German federal archives.
Now, I have to be fair to Harris. He wasn’t simply, or probably even primarily, motivated by a desire to kill German civilians: the man genuinely believed it to be the most effective way to wage war against Germany. But Harris was an arrogant man, a cold and callous one, and that combined with his confidence in his methods made him thoroughly blind to a single fact: he was utterly, absolutely, wrong.
Harris’ actual management of his air force was very able, from an administrative perspective. His tactical doctrine, likewise, was also competent, but his strategic decisions on the conduct of the war in the air bordered on abysmal. Every theory he had on the effectiveness of area bombing proved wrong. He believed the targeting of factories, railways, oil refineries, mines, and all else a strategic folly, and a distraction from his doctrine: bomb the largest population centers he could find until they were rubble, and then bomb the rubble. It was meant to break the German morale, and obliterate the German civilian population who supported the fighting Wehrmacht.
And it didn’t work. Thousands upon thousands of bombs didn’t make the Germans any less willing to fight on- in fact, it motivated them even more, as it gave them one of the best and strongest motivations a fighting nation can possibly have: true, genuine hate.
Harris believed fiercely that bombing German cities to rubble and then bombing the rubble would force Germany to surrender, and thus, combined with his cold attitude towards the situation, he grossly overestimated not only the damage he was doing to Germany, but also his ability to inflict said damage. Repeatedly he promised to bring about a German surrender in a matter of months, and repeatedly those months passed and Germany seemed no closer to surrender. He drove his crews even harder on, ruthlessly, to deliver on the next promise- he did so beyond the point of military feasibility, and the monstrous toll that took on British bomber crews gave Harris the epithet ‘Butcher’[1].
Harris soon ceased to be an asset for the Allied air war, and became a liability. When his superiors in the Royal Air Force and the Allied Supreme Command tried to shift the bombing targets to more vital targets, such as railyards, oil and synthetic fuel plants, or arms and munitions factories, Harris fought against it tooth and nail as a distraction from his cause of killing as many German civilians as possible. He struggled against it to the best of his ability, and wherever he could he kept siphoning away assets for his own beloved city bombing. The rubble got bombed, and vital rail and industrial assets got ignored.
“Harris made a habit of seeing only one side of a question and then of exaggerating it. He had a tendency to confuse advice with interference, criticism with sabotage and evidence with propaganda,” wrote Sir Charles Webster in The Strategic Air Offensive Against Germany, and it was a dead-on assessment. Harris’ actions significantly impaired the Allied air offensive from switching to targets that mattered, and attacking those targets even when the air offensive changed direction.
Politz Synthetic Fuel Plant, being bombed by Allied aircraft. Harris had warred tooth and nail against the switch to the oil targets- it took until June 1944 for Harris to agree to redirect ‘spare effort’ to oil targets, which, of course, he tried to keep to a minimum. Even after the war, Harris maintained that the attack on oil had no indication it would succeed, and argued that what the Allied strategists had done was to bet on the most unlikely horse and happen to win.
Now, I don’t know whether Harris’ primary motivation was a desire to keep killing German civilians or simply a belief that this way was the most effective way to defeat Germany. But as I have stated, I’m not here to moralize about Harris, and the answer to the question above is only relevant if I’m to judge the morality of his person and his actions.
From a military perspective, it’s irrelevant what Harris’ motivation was. The fact of the matter is, that motivation made Harris fixated on wrong objectives and thus severely undermined the efficiency of his war in the air. Harris, driven by his arrogant confidence and his self-righteousness and his contempt for Germany(in whichever proportions), drove his men onwards past their limits. He drove them to their deaths, in pursuit of arrogant promises and a self-righteous crusade, aiming for targets that simply, in comparison to what should have been attacked, simply paled with regards to their military value.
And Harris stubbornly, blindly stuck on to this course, in face of all evidence to the contrary. Despite his administrative and tactical merits, which deserve acknowledgement, this critical flaw is, inevitably, a formidable stain on his reputation and legacy.
Footnotes:
[1]: Unlike common misconception, Harris’ epithet ‘Butcher’ had nothing to do with his air campaign’s civilian. Although not everyone shared Harris’ eager bloodthirst, few people in Britain at the time had much compassion for dead German civilians. The origin of the nickname was not the German deaths, but how almost suicidally he drove his crews onward: on average, less than a quarter of British bomber crews above Europe survived to complete a tour of duty before being killed, badly wounded, or taken prisoner. A considerable segment of casualties came from failures stemming from Harris’ far-reaching dreams.
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Harris’s strategy fundamentally fails on a psychological level.
There are two relevant definitions of force to describe Harris’s plan: Brute force and Coercive force.
Brute force is the act of violence.
Coercion is the sincere and believable promise of violence short of getting what the coercive side w
… (more)What do you think the UK should have done? Embraced Nazism? Adolf would’ve loved it.
Garrett StockWow this comment is asinine.
The RAF cut its teeth in imperial campaigns employing similar strategies. Man of his time; Man of his Service.
No. There weren’t the aircraft or the personnel to indulge in major bombing campaigns between the wars.
Well… Panzer II wasn’t a bad tank: it was just a tank that was… never really meant to do what it had to do.
The thing about Germany was, it just didn’t have tanks, and it barely had any know-how in how to build them. As late as 1932, the fledgling German panzer arm was training with wooden mockups for tanks: that year was also when the Inspectorate of Motorized Troops came together and decided on the future of the German tank arm. Oswald Lutz, head of the Inspectorate, and his staff(including noteworthy Panzer commanders like Nehring and Guderian) eventually agreed that two kinds of tanks would be necessary for a tank force.
One would be a ‘light’ tank with an armor-piercing gun designed to fight other enemy armor, while the other would be a ‘medium’ tank with a shorter, large caliber weapon for support purposes. Both these tanks would have a crew of five, with three-men turrets, and radios in each tank. A third tank, a heavy fort-breaker vehicle, was considered but decided against.
One might recognize these two design ideals as the Panzer III and IV, respectively.
The problem was, Germany really didn’t have much know-how about tank building, and two brand-new tank designs wouldn’t be ready quickly. In the interim time, the army needed something more than wooden mockups: so the Germans basically took the British Carden-Loyd tankette, and developed that further into a training tank with two machine guns: the Panzer I.
But… I realize I’m repeating myself but Germany really didn’t have much know-how on building tanks. And so, the design and development work on what would become Panzer III and IV got delayed, and delayed, and it became increasingly unsettling to the fledgling German armored arm that, if they were to be called upon to fight, they had nothing but training vehicles with which to do so. It was Lutz who, here, decided on an emergency stopgap: an altered, larger variant of the Panzer I, just big enough to mount a 20mm gun on its turret. The Panzer II.
Panzer II at Saumur tank museum, France.
For a stopgap emergency solution, built by a country with almost no experience in tank building, the Panzer II was exceptional. The vehicle was fast, agile, well-armed enough to fight contemporary tankettes, and very reliable. But it was an emergency stopgap solution, and it showed. It had a single-man turret, the armor was effectively nonexistent, and the gun only just adequate.
Panzer I and II, in their intended roles, were entirely good vehicles. But their intended role wasn’t the role they found themselves pushed into. Germany never intended to fight any kind of major war with them.
And yet, the war came, and when it did, there were 2100 Panzer I’s and II’s deployed in the German field formations, and only 590 other tanks. And in that role of frontline service, the Panzer I and II just weren’t meant for it, and they understandably suffered.
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I recall having read that a significant portion of Germany's armored vehicles (when Hitler invaded Poland and France) were tanks from Czechoslovakia, seized when Germany “absorbed” the Sudetenland, and when Germany invaded France, Germany seized some high quality armored vehicles (I read that French
… (more)“I recall having read that a significant portion of Germany's armored vehicles (when Hitler invaded Poland and France) were tanks from Czechoslovakia, seized when Germany “absorbed” the Sudetenland,”
Partly true.
There really weren’t too many tanks that were produced by the Czechs by the time of the G
… (more)Edward AdamchekThanks yet again, your information has been very helpful, as I’ve relied on bits & pieces to develop an understanding of European WWII armor-based actions. One last question, did the Germans seize significant British armor when the Expeditionary Forces were withdrawn from France at Normandy?
The Panzer II was not a bad design in itself, it was the best that could be implemented at that time within the design experience available. The fact is that it remained in service until 1944. It was basically a light reconnaissance vehicle, armed with a 20mm cannon, so it was not a main battle tank
… (more)Edward AdamchekThanks for the informative post & for expounding upon the “rumors” I had heard over the years, confirming some which confused me and seemed contrary to what I had come to believe, over the years. Do you have any opinions of the French armor, captured when France capitulated? I had heard good things, but never found true confirmation, just vague allusions that French tanks were slow, but well armored and were overrun by German tanks because French armor wasn’t used in a coordinated fashion, being used as infantry support; I read the bit about infantry support role & that many French tanks couldn’t coordinate because many lacked radios. Thanks again for confirming/denying many of the questions and doubts I had from European Theater armor; it was never a strength for me.
To be fair, as late as 1941 the Panzer 2 could penetrate and destroy at 400 yards 90% of all Soviet tanks and had much better optics etc. In 1939 it could defeat any Polish tank(ette), and in 1940 light British and French tanks. It was also useful in reconnaissance roles and as a platform for some a
… (more)The 20mm being inadequate is a brass misconception. Most tank guns were usuallt expected to penetrate a lot more than tanks present at the time. In fact, the post war (entering cold war) years are probably the best for armor effectivenes.
Is it so meh, though?
Robert’s Kingsguard is often described as ‘lousy’, but a quick look through its members doesn’t add up to its description. Jaime Lannister and Barristan Selmy don’t need any words to praise their swordfighting abilities, yes, but what exactly is wrong about the rest? Because I don’t see a lot.
Mandon Moore may be hated by everyone whether smallfolk or fellow knight, but he is an excellent fighter nonetheless. Arys Oakheart is hardly a legend on par with Arthur Dayne, but he’s well above your average knight. Meryn Trant is a piece of shit through and through, but even Jaime describes him as a good fighter and the Kingslayer is not known for liberally praising others’ swordsmanship. And we don’t know anything about Preston Greenfield’s talent, but if his actions in the riot at King’s Landing is anything to go by, he at least doesn’t lack in courage.
The only man in Robert’s Kingsguard who truly had no business at all being there was Boros Blount, a fattening old man and a coward by most accounts. But for the rest? There’s really not much evidence of accusing any one of them save Boros of being bad or even mediocre fighters: even Meryn Trant, most often pointed insultingly at, is entirely competent. He’s a right bastard, but that doesn’t make him a bad fighter.
Fact of the matter is, Kingsguard made of legends are rare. Even Aerys’ legendary Kingsguard wasn’t as formidable as perception makes it: yes, it had the legends of Arthur Dayne and Barristan Selmy, Gerold Hightower and Jaime Lannister, but we have no evidence to believe that Gwayne Gaunt or Jonothor Darry or Lewyn Martell or Harlan Grandison or even Oswell Whent were legends, as opposed to simply being good and able fighters like Mandon Moore.
Very few of the Kingsguard we know to have existed were people like Arthur Dayne.
In all honesty, considering the fact that he was picking this guard in the aftermath of a civil war for the throne, which not only seen a lot of knights killed or exiled but also severely cut down on the pool of people who you could expect to be at least somewhat loyal to the so-called Usurper, Robert got together a fairly competent(if not very nice) Kingsguard, though he’d be well-advised to rid himself of Blount.
I’d be willing to wager that Robert’s seven are, with the exception of Boros Blount, well within the mean of your average Kingsguard. That most of them were very… unpleasant fellows doesn’t make it comprised of incompetents.
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Lot of evidence in the books points to many previous Kingsguards being unpleasant men too. So Robert’s seven are not that different in that sense either.
Yeah, but when people criticize Robert’s Kingsguard it’s not only about skill. In-universe and out, character is important to the measure of a knight as well, and Robert’s KG is like 50% thugs in armor + Jaime, whom everybody in-universe views as the absolute worst not only of this lot but of probab
… (more)The reason for the SA being censured had very little to do with the SS. The SS only provided the means- not the ‘why’.
In the Party’s younger days, the SA had been a vital tool for Hitler’s rise to power: starting as a small wing of enforcers to make sure agitators didn’t disrupt NSDAP meetings, it had grown into a large, loosely organized paramilitary, used both as defenders against, and initiators of, politically motivated street violence. Without Röhm and his SA, Hitler’s rise to power would indeed have been fairly unlikely.
But by 1933, things had changed.
Now in power, Hitler needed to provide the German people with the safety and security he had promised them: but the SA, by now used to more than a decade of political violence, proved ill adapted to hanging up the proverbial club. The overgrown SA, by now numbering more than two million people, had grown into a massive protection racket and street mob. Running political advertisements and legal fundraising for the Party wasn’t in its interests. Drunken brawls, attacks against police, and the like were common: they were even known to harass foreign diplomats.
Furthermore, the organization had grown into a major ideological difference with the rest of the NSDAP. Recruiting primarily among the poor, unemployed, dissatisfied masses of the Weimar Republic, the SA had always been heavily left-wing teetering on the brink of communism: for all intents and purposes, most of the organization including Röhm himself were effectively Strasserists. These ideological similarities, as well as the promise of survival from prosecution, drew communists en masse into the SA after Hitler’s rise to power: the Preußische Geheimpolizei estimated that seventy percent of all new recruits into the SA were former communists, the so-called ‘steaks’(brown on the outside, red on the inside).
The organization wasn’t content with Hitler’s coming to power. It wanted so much more. And it seemed strong enough to get it: its numbers swelled by the day, and its control, ever since 1931, was directly centralized under Röhm rather than regional formations reporting to their local NSDAP offices.
And the lust of Röhm and the SA for more, alienated everyone Hitler hoped to gather support from.
The SA on the march in Spandau, Berlin, shortly before Hitler’s rise to power. The SA was ill-trained and ill-organized, but it was large and well armed. Röhm had effectively brought himself in total command of the largest armed force in the Reich. Picture from the German federal archives.
The continuous violence that continued in the streets alienated the people. Röhm and his SA’s calls for a socialist revolution and breakup of aristocratic estates and business conglomerates made Röhm, and by extension the NSDAP, severely off-putting to German businessmen and aristocracy. It also made him enemies in the Party: with Göring angry over the SA running riot in Prussia, which he was Minister-President of, and Himmler saw a political chance to break his fledgling SS out of SA’s control.
But none of these did more towards nailing the SA in its coffin than Röhm’s attitude towards a single organization did: the Reichswehr.
Röhm was a man with a vision: a vision of the destruction of the aristocratic German officer corps, which he loathed, and the rise of the SA to become the new German military. He wasn’t quiet about it, either: sending letters to then-Oberst Walter von Reichenau, head of the Ministeramt, about how the conduct of war was now the task of the SA, lobbying Hitler to make him the Minister of Defense, and eventually sending a memorandum to the Ministry of Defense demanding that the SA replace the regular army.
In Feburary 1934, Hitler tried to quell tensions with a meeting between him, Röhm and von Blomberg, the Minister of Defense, where he forced Röhm to acknowledge the status of the Reichswehr. But even that held Röhm in check only for a matter of minutes, with Röhm loudly declaring, as soon as Hitler left, that he had no intention to ‘listen to a corporal’.
The next few months went, with the people, the army, the industry the aristocracy, and even Mussolini himself all trying to drive Hitler to rein in the SA, Himmler and Göring undermining Röhm to Hitler, and Röhm working to strengthen his position. In the latter half of June, things came to a head.
Hitler had departed towards President von Hindenburg’s estate in Neudeck, where Hindenburg had summoned him. But once there, Hitler didn’t meet Hindenburg, but Minister of Defense von Blomberg. Knowing Blomberg’s good relations with Hitler, Hindenburg had selected him to deliver his message to Hitler.
The message was, obviously, a lot more diplomatic in phrasing than this, but its content simply amounted to ‘Rein in your brownshirts, or I will dissolve the government and declare martial law.’
Hitler had to act.
The next few days were spent with intensive preparations for Röhm’s takedown, both to justify it and to permit it in the first place. On 25 June, Werner von Fritsch placed the army on maximum readiness, a reminder to Hitler of Hindenburg’s ultimatum. Hitler moved quickly to reassure the army through Reichenau(who, as head of the Ministeramt, was the Army’s political liaison) that he was about to move against Röhm, and asked for the Army’s cooperation.
On 29 June, an article by Blomberg assuring Hitler of the Army’s support was published on the Völkischer Beobachter. The next day, at 04.30, the hammer fell.
Of course, Hitler, as cunning and ruthless as always, saw no qualms with striking at some of his other enemies in the loud sounds of the move against the SA. Vice-Chancellor Franz von Papen was arrested and some of his associates were murdered. Generals Kurt von Schleicher and Ferdinand von Bredow, who had been politicking to exploit the Röhm-Hitler divide(but didn’t actually collaborate with Röhm, as they were accused of) were among those murdered: they would eventually be rehabilitated from those accusations by work of their fellow officers. Gustav Ritter von Kahr, former state commissioner of Bavaria who had deserted the Beer Hall Putsch(into which he was coerced to begin with), was also murdered.
As of the SA? The organization was effectively decimated, with hundreds of senior officers arrested and dozens executed, including Röhm himself.
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And of course, it ended up backfiring on the Army, because the SS became a much better private army than the SA ever could have hoped to be.
I’ve always suspected that Goering put the hit on von Kahr. Hitler had publicly said before that it was a good thing that the Beer Hall Putsch had failed, becau
… (more)To be fair, the SS also felt much less interested in trying to replace rather than supplement the Army, possibly because they knew how it ended for Röhm. Himmler did attempt a little power move in 1940 when he tried to convince Hitler to let the Waffen-SS have the first pick of manpower, but he was
… (more)“destruction of the aristocratic German officer corps, which he loathed"
A GERMAN of all people saying that?!? Did Rohm know anything about Germany military history?!?
Not a lot, apparently.
Rohm was more motivated by social and class issues than “military history” issues, and likely felt that having a 2 million man force behind him trumped the small 100,000 man German military.
He certainly got a very rude awakening….
I would heavily recommend it, but not for the reasons you’re concerned about.
It is not a statement entirely without merit to say that some professors’ English is a bit iffy, and can at times be difficult to understand, though it’d be an unfair and exaggerated indictment to say that you can’t understand what they’re saying.
However, I haven’t actually seen any professor switch to Turkish in a lesson supposed to be given in English, except, occasionally, when saying something directly addressed to someone Turkish or when talking about something not directly relevant to the lesson. Now, it’s possible that there are those who indeed aren’t fluent in English and just give lessons that should be English in Turkish, but if there are any, I have neither taken lessons from them nor heard of them, and I’ve been here for three years.
Therefore, I can say with confidence that you’re very unlikely to have any academic troubles because your proficiency in Turkish is lacking.
Now, learning Turkish would also make things more convenient for you socially, as everyone you meet(excepting other foreign students) will by default be more conversant in Turkish than they are in English. But pretty much every one of your fellow students will be conversant to some degree in English, so it’s not like you wouldn’t be able to communicate with them without knowing a lot of Turkish.
No. The reason I’m heavily recommending at least some degree of studying Turkish before starting here is simple: Hacettepe University is, as should be obvious, in Turkey, and presumably you don’t intend to spend your entire life as a student within the school grounds.
And I’m saying this as a Turk, it’s not a too pleasant experience living in Turkey without at least some basic knowledge of Turkish(enough to ‘get my point across’, as we say). The percentage of fluent English speakers in Turkey isn’t too high, and a lot of our genuinely helpful citizens subscribe to the theory that not understanding Turkish is a hearing ailment that can be circumvented if you repeat the same thing loudly enough.
Now, it’s not that you won’t have the chance to learn while here: indeed, with opportunities to use the language every day you should rapidly grow better at it. But Turkish is a hard language, and Hacettepe has a notoriously difficult medical school: thus, I wouldn’t recommend having to learn Turkish from the ground up while simultaneously going through the academic course of the school itself.
Living in Turkey, at some point you’ll have to learn Turkish if just to make your daily life easier, not to mention for the purposes of your future residency if you intend to pursue it here.. And it’ll be much easier on you if you go to Turkey with some knowledge of the language that you can build on while there, as opposed to going there with no knowledge of Turkish: you won’t have too many troubles with your teachers and your fellow students, but life in general would be troublesome. And every hour you spend learning Turkish now, is one hour you won’t have to spend later simultaneously with your rather hard academic life.
Don’t try to go to Turkey speaking Turkish like a native, of course. You’ll have years of using that language to get more proficient. But going to Turkey with at least some starting proficiency of Turkish will help you a lot.
In any case, I wish you good luck.
“not understanding Turkish is a hearing ailment that can be circumvented if you repeat the same thing loudly enough.”
DO…
YOU…
SPEAK….
TURKISH???
Turkish seems to have a very easy grammar (negative, past) compared to languages such as german or french. However to remember the words is the most difficult thing for me, coming from latin languages where most words sound similar:
Sun - sonne - soleil - güneş
Garden - garten - jardin - bahçe
Saturday
… (more)This question kind of reminds me of the British saying of ‘Well, stick a broom up my arse and I’ll sweep the floor as well while at it’.
The quick and easy answer is ‘no, not really’: but the reason for that wasn’t a simple lack of technical capability. The He 111 and Ju 88 level bombers of the Luftwaffe could and did do a pretty respectable job at strategic bombing operations when the situation presented itself, as evidenced by the greatly successful bombing raids on Gorky. Certainly, they had the capability to mess up the Soviet factory evacuation, at least in theory.
The problem is… just how much are the German pilots and ground crews supposed to do?
At the start of Operation Barbarossa, the German ‘striking arm’ in bomber and ground attack aircraft comprised 271 twin-engine bombers in Luftflotte 1, 300 twin-engine bombers, 295 dive bombers, 201 twin-engine fighters that already did or could serve as fighter-bombers(, and a single squadron of 38 single-engine fighter-bombers in Luftflotte 2, and 356 twin-engine bombers in Luftflotte 4. A total of 1461 strike aircraft.
This meant there was one German bomber of various kinds per every roughly 2500 Soviet personnel that was in a position to take part in the initial stages of Operation Barbarossa, and one German bomber per slightly less than that German soldier in the East.
And this force, if the raw numbers of men involved isn’t astonishing, has to fight over an aerial battlefield of nearly seven hundred thousand square kilometers- or, about one German bomber per some 470 square kilometers of airspace.
If you, for example, want to compare with the air campaign of the Allies over Normandy, each Luftwaffe bomber, no matter the type, at Barbarossa had to support eight times as many men, attack twenty-five times as many men, and cover an airspace not that short of five hundred times larger than each Allied bomber at Normandy was responsible with.
The task load is monumental.
September 1941, Junkers Ju 88 in the East. Photo from the German federal archives.
So, what you are asking is, this strike arm of aircraft, which with that massive task load, over seven hundred thousand square kilometers of airspace, has to bomb Soviet airfields, interdict moving Soviet formations, bomb assembly areas, give ground support to friendly units in need, do anti-shipping raids, bomb railroads and telephone lines, and do a whole bunch of other things, could further be saddled with the task of bombing even more rail lines and even more cities to stop the relocation of Soviet factories?
In that case… why not give them a broom while at it?
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Excellent answer!
The same logic also applies to the Lufwaffe for Operation Sealion. They just have to destroy the RAF and sink the Royal Navy, and support ground operations at the same time. And that is in a much smaller area!
The Lufwaffe needs to get gud. Its only one of the largest navy and airforce on the planet.
A lot.
In terms of utilizing foreign manpower, the Wehrmacht didn’t do so on a ratio as high as the Waffen-SS, which eventually had half its manpower composed of non-Germans. But still, staggering numbers of foreigners from many nations served in elements of the German Armed Forces.
The exact numbers are not easy to determine: both because of the loss of many German documents from the era(including the headquarters archive at Zossen), and because of the simple question of who exactly is German or foreign. This issue especially crops up with populations like the Alsatians(of which some 150.000 served in the Wehrmacht), or the Volksdeutsche in Poland: how many of those people should count as Germans, and how many as Frenchmen/Poles forced into service?
Nevertheless, we can guess.
In the East alone, more than one million, possibly up to two million, Soviet citizens served in the Wehrmacht. The overwhelming majority were Hilfswilliger, auxiliary troops attached to German combat troops: by 1944 one out of every ten men serving in the Heer was a Soviet Hilfswilliger.
It’s strongly suspected that more than one million Soviet citizens in total served in that auxiliary capacity, but they were far from the only ones. Though the Hilfswilliger formed the overwhelming majority of Soviets serving in the Wehrmacht, many others existed. There was an entire division of Azeris and Turkestanis, more than two hundred thousand Cossack and Kalmyk cavalrymen, more than 200.000 Ukrainians and tens of thousands of Russians in various independent armed formations of battalion size or larger, some sixty thousand Armenians and Georgians, about half that from other Caucasian ethnicities(Circassians, Abkhazians, Chechens, Dagestanis, and some half a dozen other groups), and some ten thousand Tatars, Bashkirs, and Chuvashs, as well as tens of thousands from the three Baltic states.
Two Hilfswilliger in uniform, both decorated with the General Assault Badge. It was awarded to personnel who had taken part in three infantry assaults in three separate days, but weren’t part of an infantry formation themselves. Photo from the German federal archives.
Just so far, we’re dealing with anywhere between one to two million: probably a median figure of 1.5 million is appropriate. And then we have to move into elsewhere.
In Poland, it’s difficult to determine who among the Poles serving in the Wehrmacht were actually of German origin, and who were Polish; but the generally accepted estimation is that about half a million Poles served in the Wehrmacht, as volunteers or conscripts(usually the latter). To this, we then ought to add tens of thousands of Croats, some fifty thousand Spaniards, up to ten thousand Frenchmen, some 150.000 Alsatians(or however many of those can be deemed as non-German, which is a contentious matter), another ten to fifteen thousand Russian emigres in Yugoslavia(who formed a volunteer anti-partisan force in Yugoslavia, and as non-Soviet citizens were the only Russians fighting for Germany who the Western Allies didn’t forcibly repatriate to the Soviet Union after the war), and maybe some ten thousand Arabs and Indians.
Tens of thousands of Italians as well, who fought in formations subordinate to the Wehrmacht after the surrender of the Italian state, as well as about five thousand Danes and about that many Norwegians, twelve thousand Luxemburgers, and a few hundred each from many other nations.
All of this put together, we can reliably say that the number of foreigners who served as part of the Wehrmacht well exceeded two million men.
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Good answer but quick note. The two Hiwis in the picture are not wearing German uniforms.
The man on the left is wearing a prewar Latvian uniform with an m35 Russian side cap. The man on the right is wearing the Soviet m35 tunic with civilian pants and a traditional Kartuz hat.
Appreciated to hear that- I should edit.
“by 1944 one tenth of every man serving in the Heer was a Soviet Hilfswilliger.”
This is a… peculiar wording. Did Hitler put all German soldiers and hiwis into giant pot, thoroughly blended them and then used resulting broth to make new soldiers for him?)
Damn it- I should rephrase that. Thanks for pointing out.
If Manstein had led the Deutsche Afrikakorps, he wouldn’t have tried for Suez.
If you are expecting a detailed analysis of Rommel’s campaign and his errors in this answer, you will not find one- suffice to say that by this point, that topic is well-trod ground in my answers[1][2][3]. But fact of the matter is, Rommel’s flaw in North Africa didn’t have anything to do with his tactical talents: by all accounts, Erwin Rommel was as fine a tactician as any, and he demonstrated that. Over and over.
Fact of the matter is, Suez was not an attainable goal. The simple physical realities of German logistics made a push to Egypt extremely risky, and a capture of Suez basically impossible. Not even total victory on sea would have mattered: Italian Libya had no rail lines and only one major military highway, and no matter how much supplies Germans could heap into Tripoli or Benghazi, their tranport into Egypt was a daunting task.
Perhaps, and that is a ‘maybe’, the Thoma Solution would have worked, as suggested by Wilhelm Ritter von Thoma in early 1941: the removal of most of the Italian troops from the theater to ease the supply burden, and the deployment of a corps of four German panzer divisions for a rapid push into Egypt. Even that is a gamble, but whether Thoma’s solution would work is at best academic. Removing Italian troops from Africa wasn’t an option, a political impossibility. It won’t happen.
With the opportunity gap of von Thoma’s solution gone and in any case his solution being politically impossible, it is simply not possible for the Axis to supply a sufficiently strong advance into Suez. Nothing Germans can possibly do will fix this problem: the bottlenecks are offloading capabilities of the Libyan ports and the overland distances involved.
Rommel didn’t fail his drive to Suez because his tactical skills were not up to par. His 1942 offensive was a typical example of how his entire war had gone in Africa, with his tactical skill being called upon time and again to get Rommel out of situations that his disregard of logistics got him into. But eventually, Rommel and his tired men reached to El Alamein, and at last his tactical excellence was no longer enough to dig himself out of that pit.
Nobody’s would have been.
The difference of putting Manstein into North Africa wouldn’t have been him doing what Rommel couldn’t do and extract another three hundred and sixty kilometers’ worth of assault out of troops that had already pushed back five hundred kilometers past their limits. It would simply be him realizing what could and couldn’t be done, and simply not trying to.
Germans can’t take Suez. It might be a lot closer and appear a lot more takeable on the map, but in the reality of the situation it’s not much more achievable than New York. The only difference is whether the commander in Africa can realize that.
Footnotes
[1] Cem Arslan's answer to Why did Rommel lose El Alamein? The Axis were doing so well when suddenly they lost the second battle of El Alamein in 1942.
OoWhen your trucks carrying fuel need one third of the fuel they carry to get to the front, there is precious little you can do.
Ok, i did some math, with some numbers on fuel consumption of some of the trucks used by Germans and Italians in Afrika.
On average the fuel (diesel) consumption of the 3 to
… (more)Could the Germans have used their bomber aircraft as transport to bring fuel in where they needed it?
Cem ArslanKesselring ran a pretty sizeable air supply operation using any and all German or Italian transport aircraft he could get his hands on- at its culmination, in early 1943 every day 150 Junkers Ju 52’s were landing on Tunisian airfields loaded with cargo. But Tunisia is one thing- getting to the Axis forces deep into Egypt was much harder and more hazardous, and the Axis simply didn’t have anywhere near enough airlift in the Mediterranean to make a difference. The Axis at El Alamein at the peak of the campaign required well in excess of 130.000 tons every month, about half of which reached the front line in best circumstances. To make up the shortfall you would need some seven hundred Junkers Ju 52’s making a drop every month- not counting any planes that need to be repaired or are shot down, so you probably actually need in excess of a thousand. In July 1942 the Luftwaffe had 365 serviceable transport aircraft, total.
Thanks for your maths. Yet…Astoundingly, Rommel managed somehow to get just 150 km (ca. 90 miles) away from Suez. And that with the very limited number of tanks, troops, planes and supplies he had. These questions are always based on: “What if…”. Etc. etc. IF…Germany would never have attacked the So
… (more)Juha OksanenThey had the trucks for it, but not the tonnage. When the last of the DAK surrendered, the total number of captured trucks was over 70 000. Thats several square kilometers of nothing but trucks. But there were no ports big enough in the eastern half of mediterranean africa to facilitate the transport of other materiel, even if they had the libyan oilfields in use and had time and resources to build and defend refineries. Crude oil is well and good, but diesel or petrol moves tanks and trucks. Development of refineries in libya would have made north africa even more of a target for allied efforts. DAK was foolish attempt from the get go, but it is easy to say that with hindsight.
Some time I would like to know where people see Manstein’s “genius”. Yes, there is the “Manstein Plan” (which Guderian assisted him with) and there is Third Kharkov (which was a lot more pale in reality than in Nazi propaganda). Apart from that he seems to have been no more than a slightly below ave
… (more)Well, let’s see.
- There’s the Manstein Plan- which Guderian only contributed to by confirming the idea was indeed feasible(Guderian himself admits so in his memoirs).
- There’s the 1941 summer campaign, in which he was one of the most successful of corps commanders.
- There’s the war in Crimea, where he pre
Peter LewerinI forgot Feodosiya, that victory was impressive. And the assault gun idea was indeed clever. At Daugavpils he lead his corps carelessly into a situation where he had too little fuel to even defend efficiently, and with a large number of tanks broken down because he had taken them overland. Going for Luga, he instead lagged behind because he couldn’t figure out the effect of terrain on armored vehicles. On the road to Shimsk he found another way to fail: his corps drove into an ambush and needed reinforcements to break out. It was a nasty defeat that cost the Germans all damaged vehicles. His tank division had to be put in reserve. Once he was given an army command he performed better. As a corps commander he was pretty useless, and I think only the Soviet collapse saved his career (or his life). I question the cleverness of the Crimea campaign, though. There were a lot of brute force operations with heavy losses there, and when he received the 22. Panzer-Division he immediately broke it by deploying it inexpertly and against doctrine. What exactly was successful with the counteroffensive at Sinyavino? Like with Sevastopol, his forces took severe losses and it took a long time for Manstein to get into position. While the Soviet losses were worse, they could replace them. The armies of Army Group North were so battered by the fighting that they had to be downgraded to the lowest readiness level, suitable only for defense. And three months later, the next Red Army offensive undid everything Manstein had achieved. With Army Group Don, Manstein simply had no resources to conduct operations with. Less than half of Army Group B came out in a fighting retreat, no thanks to Manstein. He deserves credit for frantically directing units to patch up holes in the front for long enough that large parts of Army Group A could return to the Ukraine. But the strongest weapon he had was that the Soviet Fronts were exhausted and out of supply. His vaunted victory at Kharkov was mostly the result of Stavka once again pushing their tank armies further than they could handle. It was an important victory, but again the cost was a significant weakening of the German army. Manstein was also prioritized for reinforcements and fuel up to the day he was relieved. Surely he should have been able to perform at least a little better than his colleagues? At Kursk, Manstein failed to do necessary preparations to deal with the minefields, which was to prove a disadvantage for the southern pincer during the whole operation. He also failed to read the map properly, sending some of this tank corps straight into impassable terrain. This meant that movement was slow and costly (a theme with Manstein) and that the spearheads tended to choose the path of least resistance. His plan at Kursk was very basic: mostly he just stacked as much armor as possible and hoped that they would bludgeon their way through the Soviet lines. Then he split the command between Hoth and Kempf, again against doctrine. He didn’t have proper reserves, just a decimated tank corps that he somehow believed could make a difference—and was in any case designated as defense for the army group’s right flank. On July 13, Mansteins units were nearing the end of their ability to advance, and they weren’t quite halfway through the Soviet defenses. On that day he told Hitler that victory was within reach. Whether he was deluded or trying to appease the Führer is unclear, but he can’t have had a realistic idea of how his command was doing. Then he was surprised by the Soviet counter-offensive, and never really got on top of the situation again. For the rest of his time in command, he was a punctured football that the Soviets were kicking down the field. Most of the time, he managed to keep his front line somewhat intact, but he also committed blunders like letting the Lyutezh bridgehead fester. Eventually he had to resort to false victories to avoid getting fired. He promised another “Backhand Blow” at Kiev, which failed completely, but he tried to spin it as a victory. Same at Vinnitsa and at Kapitanovka. During the Cherkassy-Korsun encirclement (which ended up losing him his armored reserves), he diverted forces into a failed operation against the 1TA. I’m not saying that he was a bad general, but I see no signs of genius here. He wrote a self-serving memoir where he was consistently successful except when the hordes of Slavs were in his way, or when Hitler inexplicably ended his beautiful strategies. And, of course, where he didn’t commit war crimes along the way. For some years, many war historians accepted his claims as true, but in the end facts caught up with him.
Yes, there was. The entire Southwestern Front, and if we weren’t talking about as severe a subject as war, the sheer mishandling of the entire front’s forces would be utterly comical.
The Southwestern Front, out of all the Soviet fronts at the start of Barbarossa, is cited to have been the strongest, and the one that gave the Wehrmacht the most stern opposition. These are true, but the greatest reason for the latter wasn’t the former. The force of thirty rifle, two cavalry, sixteen tank, seven mechanized and one motor rifle division, as well as three brigades of airborne troops, certainly was impressive on paper: but it wasn’t that much more than the twenty-three rifle, two cavalry, twelve tank and eight mechanized divisions that the Western Front had up to the north, and that front got utterly obliterated within two weeks.
And the most critical reason behind that front’s obliteration was just how unprepared it was. The Western Military District had taken at face value Stavka’s strict information that any and all German movement across the border was a provocation and was not to be responded to: the district commander Dmitry Pavlov was at an opera in Minsk the very night before the German attack. And of course, it was Pavlov and his staff that carried the blame for the Stavka’s error, and Pavlov and basically his entire staff, including his Chief of Staff, chiefs of the front communications corps and artillery, and the deputy commander[1] of the front air force were all executed with charges of failing to perform their duty.
In the south, the greatest asset of Kiev Military District(soon to be renamed Southwestern Front) was not the fact that it was the strongest, but its commander Mikhail Kirponos, a veteran of the Winter War and a very able officer by all accounts: certainly far more so than his colleagues Pavlov and Kuznetsov in Byelorussia and the Baltic States, respectively. But it wasn’t this talent that aided the Southwestern Front the most. It was that Kirponos just didn’t trust the Germans, and he really didn’t trust Stavka’s commands- or its intel and interpretations, for that matter.
Kirponos, 1940
Now, Kirponos really couldn’t do much about it. A lot of preparatory measures he could take would’ve required nonexistent cooperation from his superiors, and even his real authority couldn’t be fully utilized: not unless he wanted to risk being dragged out of his headquarters and executed on some charge or another. But he did his best within the extremely narrow confines he had to work in, and when the German invasion came, his forces were the only ones in the entire Soviet Union that were even remotely ready for combat.
Make no mistake, though. Kirponos’ forces could only be described as ‘ready’ in comparison to the appalling state the rest of the Soviet army was in. His forces were still mostly disorganized, surprised, short of a lot of equipment(including trucks, prime movers, and communications equipment), and most of his most important formations were freshly formed and suffered a broad plethora of problems. In every single way, they were outmatched by their German opponents. But unlike all his colleagues, Kirponos and the massive force of more than fifty divisions and four thousand tanks under him weren’t caught utterly and completely unaware, and employed well, they could seriously unhinge the southern wing of the German attack and cause very unpleasant delays for a German offensive terminally depended on speed.
Enter Stavka. Or, more specifically, one of its members- Chief of General Staff Georgy Zhukov, who as soon as being made aware of the German invasion, ordered Kirponos to attack with his mass of armored and mechanized troops, to encircle and destroy the main German advance into Ukraine(primarily composed of Ewald von Kleist’s Panzergruppe 1) and then pivot to seize Lublin, in German-occupied Poland.
Kirponos paled at the order. He knew full well how suicidal such an order was: the six mechanized corps, the entirety of the front’s mobile forces, that he was being ordered to use in this offensive were in an utter mess. Communications to those corps, reliant on civilian phone lines and messenger runners, had already broken down under air attack. Most of the newly-formed tank and mechanized units only had part of the trucks and prime movers they needed for their artillery, and had almost nothing with which to motorize their infantry. Worst of all, the front’s intelligence about the German forces was so lacking to not even deserve the use of the word ‘intelligence’.
Zhukov cared little for Kirponos’ pleas. On the contrary, the night of the invasion day he came personally to the Southwestern Front headquarters, with Stalin’s favored commissar Nikita Khruschev in tow, to make sure Kirponos complied- which in practice meant Zhukov was in command, and Kirponos only following the orders of the Chief of Staff.
And Zhukov’s offensive was an unmitigated disaster of command and control.
Almost immediately, Kirponos’ assessment proved prophetic. Kondrusev’s 22nd Mechanized Corps just had to abandon most of its artillery in its assembly areas for a lack of transport. Feklenko’s 19th Mechanized basically had to advance with all its armor and leave most of the infantry behind to follow as fast as they could. Ryabyshev’s 8th Mechanized Corps actually did have transport for its artillery, but the artillery tractors were so slow that his corps artillery still was reduced to walking speed and effectively left behind. Not even the 9th Mechanized Corps, who had the luxury of its commander Rokossovsky being the fastest to commandeer vehicles from nearby district reserves, had anywhere near the motor transport it needed.
The great mass of Soviet armor ponderously moved along to its ever-changing launch positions for the attack, strung out over open roads and empty expanses, with tanks and supply columns at the lead and infantry and artillery falling behind. The force allocated for the offensive on paper measured twenty-four mobile divisions: on the morning of 24 June, when Zhukov ordered the offensive to go ahead, only three were in position.
The result was slaughter.
Committed piecemeal, with no idea of what their fellow corps were doing, the Soviet mechanized corps were lambs to the slaughter. The 22nd Mechanized Corps was obliterated within a couple days, lost an entire brigade of tanks in a swamp, and its commanding officer Semyon Kondrusev was killed on the first day of the attack. The 19th Mechanized Corps managed to start its attack on 26 June and was reduced to nothing in three days. The 15th Mechanized Corps didn’t even manage to find the German forces it was supposed to attack.
Ryabyshev’s 8th and Rokossovsky’s 9th managed a small measure of success on 26 June, the first day of their attack, but even those successes cost heavy casualties. Helplessly watching the armored elements of his front get utterly slaughtered, Kirponos stepped out under Zhukov’s will and on 27 June ordered a general halt to the offensive. Within a matter of hours, Zhukov had countermanded the order, and ordered Ryabyshev and Rokossovsky to resume offensive.
Rokossovsky, who balked at an order so blatantly suicidal, replied by an outright refusal to Zhukov, stating that the latter was free to hold Rokossovsky personally responsible if he wished. The rivalry of the two began at this moment, and Rokossovsky never forgave Zhukov for his mislandling of the Southwestern Front’s armor. Zhukov got Rokossovsky’s reply, and then refused to inform Ryabyshev, who still believed he’d be attacking along with Rokossovsky, of the events: Ryabyshev attacked, and his corps was torn to shreds.
When the bloody week was over, six out of the Southwestern Front’s eight mechanized corps had been effectively destroyed. Zhukov excused away the catastrophe by an accusation of Kirponos’ command abilities being severely lacking, despite the fact that barring the episode of 27 June all Kirponos had done was to follow Zhukov’s orders. He then left for Moscow, leaving Kirponos to pick up the pieces of his shattered front.
Whatever allegations Zhukov levied against him, Kirponos never had the chance to defend himself. Left in the Ukraine to command his mauled forces, now subordinate to Semyon Budyonny, Kirponos and his men, forbidden from retreat, eventually found themselves in the massive Kiev pocket.
Of nearly seven hundred thousand men that had once belonged to the Southern and Southwestern Fronts, only fifteen thousand escaped the pocket. Budyonny, whose gross incompetence had contributed to disaster but who had been a close friend of Stalin, was one of them, airlifted from the pocket as it began to collapse- he would spend the rest of the war with honorific posts, and eventually die at the age of ninety and be buried with full honors. Zhukov ended the war with a chest stuffed full of medals, and the disaster of the Southwestern Front that he presided over was soon forgotten, along with all his many mistakes. He would outlive Budyonny by a year.
Kirponos? A piece of shrapnel killed him on a September evening, as he led an attempted breakout from the Kiev pocket. When he fell, he was not even two hundred kilometers away from the tiny Ukrainian village he’d been born in.
Footnotes:
[1]: It had fallen to him to take the blame for the devastation: the actual chief of the Western Front’s air force had shot himself after seeing what happened to his air force during the initial onslaught.
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Whatever allegations Zhukov levied against him, Kirponos never had the chance to defend himself. Left in the Ukraine to command his mauled forces, now subordinate to Semyon Budyonny
As they say, nothing is ever so bad that it couldn’t get worse…
The reason why Zhukov ordered the forces of the Kiev Military District to advance and encircle the opposing German forces and then capture Lublin, was that he was trying to implement the first-strike plan that had been developed by himself and people’s Commissar for war Timoshenko and approved by St
… (more)Michael, we have now an official confirmation, from the Russian President Putin, that the Soviet plan was to take over Europe as a strategic COUNTERATTACK (see Piotr Szafranski's answer to What do you make of the recent article by Russian President Vladimir Putin, published in the "National Interest
… (more)Dan PetrePutin is a truth twister propaganda spinner. Not going to believe a word he says, I'd rather listen to historians.
Because it was all the data that was available.
It wasn’t like Turkey had a bunch of data indicating who in the population was Turkish or Greek, or who was Muslim and Orthodox Christian, and decided to have the population exchange be made according to religion rather than national identity.
The Ottoman Empire had never identified its constituent millets according to national or ethnic identity. Every group in the Empire, no matter which, was identified with their religion. ‘Armenian’ in the Ottoman Empire didn’t mean someone who was ethnically or nationally Armenian: it meant an adherent of the Armenian Apostolic Church, or the Assyrian Church of the East. ‘Greeks’ weren’t ethnic or national Greeks, but those who were Greek Orthodox by religion, and included Albanians and various Slavs of Balkan origin. ‘Turks’ weren’t a category- them, as well as many other ethnic groups, were all grouped together as ‘Muslims’.
Thus, when the Turkish government had to arrange the population transfer, nobody had the slightest idea who actually was Turkish, and who was Greek- only who was Muslim, and who was Greek Orthodox. But since these religious identities in large part, though not wholly, overlapped with their respective national identities, it was simply much easier to make the split according to religion, since it wouldn’t make an awful lot of difference in reality with regards to who got sent and who stayed. Yes, there’d be the relative handful of Orthodox Turks who got to stay and Muslim Greeks who were sent away, but… both those groups represented only a tiny minority of the broad masses involved.
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Though I agree with you to some extent I think it is a bit more complicated than that. Ottoman government definitely became more and more concerned about the population of different ethnic groups.
Also Assyrians were not counted as Armenians. Assyrians do not appear on Ottoman population statistics j
… (more)It economized on men.
It’s a simple algorithm. The more prisoners could be recruited with meager privileges to keep a watchful eye on other prisoners and assisting in the regulation of the camp, the less SS men had to work the camp- and the fewer SS men worked the camp, the more SS men were available for other purposes.
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And if someone got angry enough and assaulted a Capo, no SS guards were hurt.
There’s four critical elements for a secure rule for a monarch. Four things that need to be secured, in order to seal power after such a takeover.
- Loyal lords.
- A secure lineage.
- A clean court.
- A lack of rival claimants.
Let us go bit by bit.
Loyal Lords:
In so far as the loyalty of his subordinate Lords Paramount are concerned, Robert actually is in a quite good position. He has Stormlands(as he’s the Lord Paramount there), North thanks to Ned, the Vale thanks to Jon Arryn, and through Ned and Jon, also Hoster Tully. Four out of eight is a solid power base to work on- but we need to secure the rest.
Balon Greyjoy in the Iron Isles frankly can’t be regained, and we won’t bother. This leaves three: Tywin Lannister in the west, Mace Tyrell in the Reach, and Doran Martell in Dorne. And two of these, we can strike with one fell swoop.
I realize that when my good friend Tywin presented me with the bodies of Rhaegar’s children he was intending a display of loyalty. Don’t worry, Tywin- I understand and deeply appreciate your actions. I have no doubts that you’ll be a steadfast ally to me; in fact, I’d like to have your daughter as my Queen. Surely she’ll have no better match than the King of the Seven Kingdoms.
In fact, I so deeply appreciate your siding with me that I’m willing to release your son from his Kingsguard oaths and position, so that you might have a heir better than that half-man I know you to despise. And I merely ask from a friend a little favor- while I privately appreciate your actions, I’m quite sure neither of us wants the stain of murdered children on us. So, maybe if you were to announce that Gregor Clegane and Amory Lorch disobeyed your orders to merely capture Rhaegar’s family, and turn them over to the Crown for sentencing…
If I know Tywin Lannister, he will jump on this chance. His son returned to him and his daughter as Queen binds the man to the Crown quite effectively, and there’s no way Tywin will refuse a chance to get Jaime back in exchange of Lorch and Clegane, who I can publicly execute for the murder of Elia and her sons and send their heads to Doran Martell as a gift. Even if it doesn’t make an ally out of Dorne, it’ll avoid an enemy, and I’ll take that much.
This only leaves the Tyrells- and frankly, Tyrells always side with the winners. And in this scenario, I’m that winner.
On to step two.
A Secure Lineage:
There’s two steps to ensuring this.
One, Jaime. Now, in the abstract, I don’t mind keeping Jaime in the Kingsguard, and if I were to marry anyone other than Cersei, I’d certainly strongly consider it. But when Cersei is involved, Jaime has to go. Executing him would be a permanent solution, but foolish in the extreme, sending him to the Wall is clean, but it doesn’t win me anything. Thus, we’ll trade him to Tywin for his friendship as well as Lorch and Clegane: he’s not going to be happy, but well, he’s going to have to make do with my private thanks for what he did.
Second, Cersei- and that’s even easier. I need to simply do the following:
- If I’m going to keep mourning for Lyanna, keep that to myself.
- Don’t come to bed almost dead drunk on my wedding night. Or on any night. Keep a bloody sober head.
- And do not call Cersei ‘Lyanna’ in a drunken state.
- Oh and preferably, also ease up on womanizing.
All of these may sound like things Robert wouldn’t do- and in fact, they probably are. But they’re things that need be done nonetheless.
A Clean Court:
Alright, lads- get your swords. It’s time to take a leaf from Stannis’ book. We’re scouring this court clean.
Anyone in the old court that had ties to Aerys II is going to go, with a handful of exceptions. Most of them, I’ll simply remove, but a few I’m not willing to let go: Varys is losing his head on whatever charge I can levy against him, Pycelle is to be sent packing to the Citadel, and we’re sure as hell not going to appoint Baelish when Jon Arryn brings him.
Compared to Robert’s actual Small Council, we’ll keep three seats: Jon Arryn as Hand, Barristan Selmy as Lord Commander of the Kingsguard, and Stannis as the Master of Ships: he’s my best admiral. The new Grand Maester is whoever gets sent from the Citadel, and we’ll make Master of Coin someone from the Reach: maybe Mace Tyrell himself, or someone he nominates. The Tyrells rule the richest land in the country- they surely must have learned something about managing money, and it’ll make them happy.
This leaves us with two empty offices. Master of Laws is the most ‘powerless’ of the offices, and it’s primarily going to be a way to keep people happy. At this point, the Master of Laws is going to be whoever I judge to be most in need of a bone thrown their way to keep them happy and loyal, or at least it will be someone they nominate.
The problem is Master of Whisperers. I need someone both able and loyal to replace Varys, and there isn’t exactly a lot of possible candidates that the book tells us about, but I’m sure I’ll find someone.
A Lack of Rival Claimants
Viserys, and Daenerys.
Honestly, I don’t want to kill a pair of lost children. But there isn’t exactly another route. Even if I wanted to do something like offering them a pardon if they relinquish all claims, Viserys would never accept it, and I’d simply undermine my claim.
I need them dead. But after that song and dance routine of me executing Lorch and Clegane for murdering children, I’d prefer if they could die in a way that doesn’t trace back to me… so, new Master of Whisperers that I don’t know… on to you! Don’t fail me!
Though even if he fails, all else I’ve done will probably suffice to ensure a strong position. It’ll certainly be stronger than that of Robert’s own.
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Tbh, this would be a better story than ASOIAF. Maybe I’m soft, but I find its unrelenting bleakness to be annoying.
I’m not quite sure I’d describe ASoIaF as ‘unrelentingly bleak’, but I see your point. The entirety of this wouldn’t make a wholly compelling story(for I am writing this in possession of facts that Robert wasn’t), but I can understand a wish for Robert to have ruled a little more competently.
The only thing I might add is an admittedly unconventional fifth point, the implications of which I haven’t fully considered yet, but what do you think about Joff’s idea of a “Royal Army?”
If I remember correctly, that idea(which only surfaced within the show’s verse) was Joffrey suggesting an edict that every kingdom be mandated to release a certain number of soldiers into a centralized army loyal only to the King.
The core idea of a royal army is eminently sound, but Joffrey’s method
… (more)Alfredo PerozoAll very true. Yet I think that the fact that lords would send the absolute dregs of their manpower could be used to the king’s advantage — they would be bound to have the least stake in their local communities, and the least loyalty to their immediate lords. And hey, they don’t have to stay the least and worst — instead of making up the bulk of that force, foreign professional mercenaries could train them appropriately. And keeping it as a small “elite” force might in line with say the Kingsguard might ease the cost aspect of things. Actually, I think I should write an answer about that some time.
The short answer is, ‘a significantly weakened German army’, but the short answer misses some important nuances.
To begin with, I’d quote Rundstedt’s October 1943 report:
The following forces were available in the fall of 1942:
(a) 22 Inf. Divs. in the coastal front of the Channel and Atlantic ~ About two-thirds triangular, personnel and material good, training, ditto. A large portion consisted of "ostverwendungsfahige" Divisions [divisions suitable for employment on the East Front].
(b) Motorized units in reserve: 7 first-class armoured and motorized divisions, all completely mobile and fit for the East.
(c) In addition, in reserve: 6 inf. divisions (including 4 triangular divisions).
[…]
On October 31, 1943, the following forces are available:
(a) 27 divisions on the coast of the Channel, Atlantic and the additional 650 km. of the new Mediterranean front(including 5 reserve divisions, 2 security regiments and 1 grenadier regiment, 715th Inf. Div.). Many divisions consist of 2 regiments and are very willing and courageous, but not to be compared with the personnel and material of 1942 . As new organizations, hardly suitable yet for attack missions, primarily little mobility and much too weak in artillery.
(b) Motorized units in reserve: 6 armoured and motorized units, none completely organized; Motorized Hitler Youth Division just in its beginning. Our entire defensive system rests on them! Where they stand at present as far as training and equipment is concerned, is known . In addition “for replacement" 3 reserve motorized divisions with small mobile combat teams of 1 reinforced Bn. each.
(c) In addition, in reserve: 2 reserve divisions as army group reserve with little combat value and small mobile counterattack groups as well as 3 combat teams (reinforced regiments) of the 349th, 352nd, and 353rd Inf. Divisions and the 244th and 245th Inf. Divisions in process of organization.
This isn’t a good sign. Technically, the numbers in the West must’ve slightly increased, with 35 divisions in 1942 compared to 40 in 1943(counting the three battlegroups as a total of one division, and including the two in process of forming). But many of the divisions in 1943 are smaller, they’re stretched further now with the south coast of France open to invasion, and they’re just not up to the units of the previous year.
A 1942 propaganda picture of the Batterie Lindemann in Sangatte, near the Calais area. The battery consisted of three concrete casemates, each thicker than four meters of concrete, and each housing a 406mm naval gun originally meant for the H-class battleships. It remained in action until late September, 1944, when it was captured by Canadian soldiers. Today the battery is buried under a man-made lake, that was created to help dispose of the debris from the construction of the Channel tunnel.
Second, I’m going to quote the evaluations of two select divisions out of the many in position by October 1943, from the same report:
319th Inf Div. (coastal front -- Channel Islands -- about 120 km.) triangular, (with strong coast artillery) 1 M. G. Bn., 2 mobile Bn.'s and 1 armoured Bn (additional).
Artillery: 4 light Bn.'s.
Heavy Weapons: Per regiment 1 infantry howitzer platoon; in addition, numerous emergency weapons.
Anti tank defence: Per regiment and mobile Bn., 1 antitank: Co.,
State of training: Good; not uniform owing to the exchange ot age classes and detachments.
Conclusion: Completely fit for large - scale fighting on the islands.
As you can probably see, this is a good division. It’s hardly an excellent division, but it’s entirely up to standards for a top of the line unit: it’s reasonably well equipped, well trained and well motivated(though God only knows why the fuck it is on the goddamned Channel Islands). I certainly doubt it would be too much out of place a year or two ago: it’s not as mobile as it should be, but it doesn’t need to be defending the Channel Islands.
Then there’s this one:
266th Inf. Div. (240 km. front) : 2-regimental, reorganized May 1943, partially mobile.
Artillery: 1 light Bn. of 3 batteries, 1 heavy Bn. of 4 batteries; in addition, 1 provisional battery; partially mobile.
Heavy weapons: No heavy infantry howitzer platoon with the grenadier regiments, no heavy mortars.
Antitank defence: No antitank Bn., only 6 7.5- cm. antitank guns, motorized, makeshift type.
State of training: Insufficient, as division was put in line after brief training. Considerably impaired by the exchange of age classes and detachments.
Conclusion: Partially fit for defence.
I have no words that would adequately explain this.
This division is deficient in mobility, deficient in artillery, deficient in mortars and infantry guns, deficient in AT guns, and deficient in training. The only thing it has going for it is probably that it has reasonably good morale. It’s only just able to properly defend a position and even that only under specific conditions, and it has a two hundred and forty kilometer front to hold- there’s only four divisions in France that have to hold a longer front on the coast, including the poor 158th Reserve-Division, which at the time held a 540 kilometer front and was in a shape as bad as the 266th up there. The only reason I didn’t use it as an example is that it held the calm and unlikely to be attacked Bordeaux area.
This gives us two critical pieces of information.
- The Wehrmacht in the West, as a whole, is considerably weaker than it was.
- The strength of Wehrmacht formations varies greatly between formations.
The situation in the West is frail at this point. A few days before Rundstedt’s report, Hans von Salmuth wrote to Alfred Jodl, arguing for the conscription of local French and Belgian civilians for construction work. Salmuth’s argument is certainly ruthless and callous, essentially calling for slave labor measures, but it’s difficult to not see the severity of the military situation when the man states the following with not one hint of exaggeration(emphasis mine):
The Atlantic Wall is no wall! Rather is it like a thin, in many places fragile, length of cord, which has a few small knots at isolated points, such as Dieppe and Dunkirk. The strengthening of this length of cord was no doubt well underway during the past spring and summer. Since August the effort has been getting steadily weaker. This retrograde development is continuing. Any considerable strengthening in fortress-like construction will not take place until spring. For this materiel and labour are lacking. When I visit the position, I invariably receive the report: “Workers have been transferred to O.T. construction work for the Air Force, -- usually, of course "on the Führer' s orders".
August 1942- construction work on the Atlantikwall.
Admittedly, this and Rundstedt’s report outlining all the woes of the defensive efforts in France don’t paint a wholly accurate picture of the situation in 1944- not because they were lacking in merit or weren’t accurate, but because Rundstedt’s report triggered Führer Directive 51 a few days later, where Hitler ordered a massive increase in efforts to reinforce the West. It included more tanks, AT guns and trucks for the mobile reserve, assault guns for several designated infantry divisions, additional machine guns, reinforcements for the artillery arm, stripping of safer sectors, expansion of Luftwaffe aerial and FlaK presence, and other measures.
Still, this paints an accurately bleak picture.
Nonetheless, it’s not easy to talk about the strength of the Wehrmacht in the West as a whole without giving false impressions. It’s not easy to gauge the strength of a group of about sixty divisions, ranging from full-strength Panzer divisions to what Rundstedt called “sorry lots which had returned from Russia, composed of one division commander, one medical officer and six cooks”.
Even in the mobile reserve, which typically had comprised the best of the Wehrmacht, ranged greatly in quality. On one end of the spectrum was formations like the 2. Panzer or the 9. SS-Panzer, both well equipped, well trained divisions with first-class divisional commanders, both of whom(Lüttwitz and Bittrich, respectively) were excellent trainers. On the other end stood formations like the ill-equipped and hastily trained 17. SS-Panzergrenadier, which fought entirely capably as long as it had its excellent commander Werner Ostendorff, but suffered greatly once he became a casualty, or the 1. SS-Panzer, which still hadn’t recovered from its mauling in the Ukraine and whose new replacements simply weren’t up to the standards of those lost in the East.
The Wehrmacht in the West ranged from units that would’ve been exceptional formations even by the standards of the organization’s zenith, to formations that were only barely capable of any kind of combat. But there’s no question that as a whole, in near every field that mattered save the quality of its officer corps, its fighting morale and its doctrine, the Wehrmacht was slowly bleeding to a pale shadow of its former self.
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So they placed a decent division on a tiny island while they gave 540 kilometers of front to a division that is closer to an armed police force than an actual fighting force.
In all fairness, that ‘tiny island’ is still 120km of frontline and that 540 kilometer front to police is the single most unlikely-to-be-attacked piece of the French coast.
Still, while the employment of that reserve division in the Bordeaux sector is probably a good way to economize on forces I can’
… (more)Patrick HiebingI'm sure they were there for political reasons as that is the only UK territory the Germans controlled, so they had to be defended.
Another clear point, and one I think is just as important is that by this time the Luftwaffe was a shadow of its former self. Allied airpower ran amok before and after D-Day, preventing any response from the armor division in reserve because railways were cut and French roads were completly unsuitab
… (more)The Luftwaffe lost a lot of its strength in the battles for Malta, the North African campaign, Italy, fighting Allied bombers over Germany, plus Stalingrad and Kursk. By 1944 they had aircraft but the training and experience of crews was much weaker due to severe losses. Plus Germany was suffering a
… (more)George ShersBut that was not Hitler. A rational man would not have started WWII. Certainly, if he had he would just defeat the French to knock them out from attacking in the West, left the English alone except to make a peace treaty with them, and then attacked Western Russia and stopped. But Hitler's whole belief was crazy and could not work [kill off all the Slavs so Germans could move in which meant Stalin had to resist and eventually beats the smaller Germany].
It was both.
In theory, Hitler was the sole leader of the country- his authority was near-absolute[1] and his power extended far and wide. In that regard, you could argue it was one man rule.
However, Hitler wasn’t like his Soviet counterpart. Stalin was a studious, hardworking man, almost a workaholic, who strictly controlled and insisted on controlling many workings of the Soviet state. On the other hand, Hitler was never all too interested in day to day minutiae of running a country. This didn’t mean he was lazy- he could and did work very intensely when necessary- but in a lot of matters, he delegated heavily.
Sir Ian Kershaw names this concept ‘Working towards the Führer’. While Hitler involved himself deeply in a few select matters that held his interest(usually military and political affairs), in a lot of other matters he stood above as a distant leader with little interest in the minutiae, one whose commands often took the form of loosely phrased and loosely interpreted directives or informally stated wishes. Policy in the country was run by various subordinates, ranking from the ministers to regional leaders, trying to interpret these wishes as best as they could, or in a lot of cases, in whichever way that they preferred the most for their own political or ideological aims.
Depending on what their personal beliefs were and how creative they could be in interpretations, the decisions taken by two people in accordance with the same wish expressed by Hitler could be wholly different. A good example of this, to steal one from Kershaw, was seen in parts of Poland annexed to Germany, whereupon the Gauleiters of the newly established provinces were directed by Hitler himself to Germanize their region by any means they saw fit.
To the south in Wartheland, Gauleiter Arthur Greiser would do so by running a campaign of very thorough ethnic cleansing against any Poles he could find. Just to the north, Albert Forster, Gauleiter of Danzig-Westpreussen, simply chose to take at face value any and all Poles who claimed German ancestry without any investigation: in so far as Reichsgau Danzig-Westpreussen was concerned, any Pole who claimed to be German was a German, and two thirds of the province’s Polish population eventually signed the Volksliste[2].
The Third Reich was simultaneously both rule of one and of many- where the leader held absolute power, but rarely enforced it, and the country was run by the various underlings rival to each other, each other trying to interpret Hitler’s loose directives the way they saw fit[3].
Footnotes:
[1]: Though Hitler’s power was indeed formidable, there were a small number of areas over which his authority didn’t directly extend- for example, during most of his regime he didn’t have the power to dismiss judges or overrule most decisions taken by the judiciary, which could and did lead to amusing incidents like Generaloberst Erich Hoepner suing the Reich and winning.
[2]: Of course, do not take this wrongly- Forster wasn’t doing this because he had benevolent feelings towards the Poles and wanted to give them an out. His choice to accept as German any Pole who was willing to call himself one was primarily born out of sheer practicality- against those who refused to follow his attempts at Germanization, Albert Forster certainly didn’t lack in brutality.
[3]: This had the side effect of distancing Hitler in the eyes of people from the excesses of the Third Reich that they disagreed with. Hitler’s magnetic personality had enchanted many, and this combined with the aforementioned tendency of the Reich’s organs to work semi-independently led many Germans, who witnessed acts they didn’t approve of, to simply dismiss the possibility that their beloved Führer could have anything to do with it. Hitler’s popularity remained high until the very end, and ‘if only the Führer knew!’ became a common lament, for anything from simple inconveniences to truly loathsome acts.
Hitler and his subordinates had become a retelling of the medieval image of the good king and his manipulative advisors. In some cases, this lament indeed held true, and Hitler could be and was unaware of things he wouldn’t have approved- but for the most part, he was nowhere near as ignorant as people seemed to think. For the most part, he knew, and he either approved, or just didn’t care.
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Were the Poles that Albert Forster accepted as Germans also ethnically cleansed at the end of the war like the real Germans were?
Some were.
In general, people who signed the Volksliste were subject to various punishments. Category I and II, who had strong and provable German ties(at least on paper, but in cases like Forster even pure Poles could slip in) often found themselves exiled to Germany, though a few stayed. Most every
… (more)It was a question of privileges.
The Lipka Tatars in the Commonwealth formed a pseudo-aristocratic military caste, with broad social and financial privileges afforded to them. It was unrest over revocation of many of these privileges that eventually started the Lipka rebellions, and saw thousands of Lipka Tatars defect to the Ottoman Empire. The combination of the Lipka Tatars’ knowledge of terrain and the sheer impotence and deadlock of the Polish Sejm led to catastrophe for the Commonwealth, with Sobieski leading his own troops paid from his own pockets being the only thing that salvaged something from the whole mess.
The problem for the Ottoman-Lipka Tatar alliance was that though Lipka Tatars, as was the case for many other societies that served as border lords(such as the Crimean Khanate, or the Cossacks of the Right Bank Ukraine) enjoyed a healthy degree of autonomy, it still did not compare to the degree of privileged positions that they had enjoyed under the Polish rule, and the kind of broad privileges and autonomies that might’ve kept the Lipka Tatars loyal were not the kind that the Empire saw fit to bestow upon most of its subjects.
Some Lipka Tatars remained with the Empire to the last- but most eventually defected back to the Commonwealth, once the newly crowned Sobieski(who already was held in high esteem by Lipka Tatars) repealed the laws infringing on Lipka Tatar privileges, and pardoned mutineers returning to Polish service.
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The Lipka Tatars were a group of Tatars who originally settled in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania at the beginning of the 14th century. They were invited into the Grand Duchy by Vytautas the Great. These Tatars first settled in Lithuania proper around Wilno/ Vilnius, Trakai, Grodno/ Hrodna and Kaunas.
… (more)“Noble Nation of Poland was in over 90% Slavic origin and was composed approximately in 40% of ethnic Poles, 25% Ruthenians, 15% Bialorussians, 10% of Lithuanians and 5% Baltic Germans 5% Tatars.”
Less than 90 percent- in 1618 8.5 million of the 12 million population consisted of Slavs(Poles, Ukraini
… (more)Stanisław SłotaAccess to "Szlachta" or Polish Noble Nation was freely to other social groups. There was no glass ceiling and everyone could promoted from any others social groups including peasants and foreigners. So in fact, access to the Polish Noble Nation group was not exclusive to narrow group but was open to the peasants and also townspeople. An example : of nobiliaton of the Lwów townspeople. It also explains why there have never been peasant revolts in the area of Polish Crown. Almost the all oligarch were in fact Ruthenian Boyars who preserved princely titles derived from during Union’s treaty of Lublin. Only one the Polish oligarchs was only Zamoyski who did not have a princely title and was an ordinary nobleman. Poland’s indigenous democratic process created the democracy, which had one million free citizens by the beginning of the seventeenth century. This happened within the multinational Polish Nobles Republic, which was rooted in the old Slavic tradition. Poland’s Lechitic roots are even today reflected in Turkish word “Lechistan” for Poland. Thus,
Polish indigenous democratic process was based on regional legislatures, similar to the old Slavic meetings meeting called by Western Slavic Lechitic tribes as “vietse,” in Russian “vieche.” During these meetings ordinary people were debating, exchanged views and by means of elections authorized their representatives to speak for them in national parliament and then report back how well they performed their tasks as well to learn about the security of the commonwealth and new form abroad. Polish national culture was built by the “Noble Nation of Poland,” by the regional legislatures which formed Polish national culture “from below” in contradistinction to the West, where national cultures were build “from above” by the royal court and the towns. Mikołaj Koprenik Jr. also led Polish monetary reform in 1526 and introduced Polish zloty while combating German forgeries of Polish coins. In Copernicus’ treaty on Polish monetary reform of 1526 Copernicus spelled out for the first time in history the economic law that “bed money chases good money out of ciculation”in his Latin book published under the title Monetae Cudende Ratio also in 1526, when Thomas Gresham (c. 1519-1579) was seven years old.
Polish indigenous democratic process was based on regional legislatures, similar to the old Slavic meetings meeting called by Western Slavic Lechitic tribes as “vietse,” in Russian “vieche.” During these meetings ordinary people were debating, exchanged views and by means of elections authorized their representatives to speak for them in national parliament and then report back how well they performed their tasks as well to learn about the security of the commonwealth and new form abroad. Polish national culture was built by the “Noble Nation of Poland,” by the regional legislatures which formed Polish national culture “from below” in contradistinction to the West, where national cultures were build “from above” by the royal court and the towns. Mikołaj Koprenik Jr. also led Polish monetary reform in 1526 and introduced Polish zloty while combating German forgeries of Polish coins. In Copernicus’ treaty on Polish monetary reform of 1526 Copernicus spelled out for the first time in history the economic law that “bed money chases good money out of ciculation”in his Latin book published under the title Monetae Cudende Ratio also in 1526, when Thomas Gresham (c. 1519-1579) was seven years old.
“were not the kind that the Empire saw fit to bestow upon most of its subjects.”
Smart fuckers you Turks were. An aristocracy addicted to privileges is what dooms all great civilizations, be they Poland or the USSR.
‘Were’ might be the accurate word- fast forward a century, and an increasingly impotent Ottoman central government was handing out privileges and local autonomies left right and center. An empire that was once distinguished by a near-total lack of local aristocracy in an era where the most of the wo
… (more)Niko NištaTo be perfectly fair, that wasn’t exactly your fault as much as it was the whim of fate. Getting attacked by all sides? Gotta make short-term bargains that cause long-term problems.
Long term problems are exploited by Russia to invade, necessitating more short-term privilege doling and overtaxation.
Overtaxation leads to revolts, which Russia uses as a pretext to invade.
Rinse and repeat.
Long term problems are exploited by Russia to invade, necessitating more short-term privilege doling and overtaxation.
Overtaxation leads to revolts, which Russia uses as a pretext to invade.
Rinse and repeat.
Have you ever heard of that saying, that goes ‘While everyone else planned to fight the last war all over again, *insert country here* prepared for the next war’?
Usually, when someone says this, it’s an exaggeration. Usually.
When you talk about the Franco-Prussian War, that’s where the exception is.
A triumphant Bismarck talking to a captured Napoleon III, painted by Wilhelm Camphausen, 1878. France until 1870 had been regarded as the world’s greatest land power: yet when war came, the Prussian victory over the French was swift, decisive, and utterly humiliating. What had happened?
Now, on a tactical perspective, these two forces were remarkably alike. If you’re expecting here treatises about how this or that force was tactically superior to the other, you won’t find it. Yes, the Prussians had their exceptional Krupp breechloaders that comprehensively outshot the French artillery, yes, the French had what probably was the best infantry rifle in the world at the time, and yes, the Germans probably had a better grasp of the new, loose infantry formations that had replaced Napoleonic massed lines.
But all that have little to do with the decisive and crushing defeat of the French. Such severe victories can’t be ensured by advantages so small… and they weren’t. The war between these two powers was won not on the tactical but the strategic scale. While the tactical employment of French and German forces were similar, their operational usage and strategical employment couldn’t possibly be any more different.
In France, the war was met by a combination of chaos and obsolescence. The French army still relied on the same system that kept its armies supplied with fighting men since 1818: a certain number of well-trained regulars, with the rest being conscripts picked by ballot to serve for seven years: men who inherently regarded their position as unlucky, and were neither well motivated nor possessed of very high spirits, especially with the harsh, seven-year service: those who received the unlucky ballots were also permitted to pay someone else to take their place, which meant that the Army inevitably got the most desperate of the French society. One quarter of all conscripts were illiterate, and at higher ranks, the officer corps, half comprised of aristocrats and half former soldiers who rose through the ranks, detested each other.
In 1868, in recognition of this fact the French attempted a series of reforms. Conscription was technically made universal, though only half of the conscripts would actually serve(for a period of five rather than seven years) while the rest went into reserve after training. An attempt was also made at reviving the National Guard but political divisions meant that the new Garde Mobile trained only for fourteen days per year, days not following each other, and couldn’t actually leave their assigned military districts, making them… not very mobile, and effectively a force that only existed on paper.
The French reforms were a step in the right direction… but they wouldn’t have sufficed and in any case they had barely started when war came. For all intents and purposes, France had her peacetime army of 270.000 with some 170.000 semi-trained reserves: most of the conscriptable population weren’t actually trained at all, the Garde Mobile barely existed, and the entire military was built upon Napoleonic foundations in its recruitment.
French reservists respond to muster: painting by Pierre-Georges Jeanniot.
On the other hand, Prussia had turned into a picture of efficiency in this regard. Prussian army was universally conscript: every man of age would serve three years in the Army, and then another five years in the Landwehr, after which they’d be placed in the reserve. Prussian populace was well motivated and believing in the necessities of conscript service, which was believed as a prestigious and honorable position. The officer corps was made up of career soldiers, who formed a tight-knit group loyal to each other.
This wasn’t merely Prussian, either. Technically, Prussia led a coalition of 25 states against France: but ever since 1866, Prussia had worked strongly to ensure the unification of all these states and their militaries under a joint command, all of them organized the same way. For all intents and purposes it was one army: one that could, with initial mobilization, without even digging too deep into the reserves could muster a field force of 730.000, all of it well motivated and well trained, and fed by an expansive reserve pool that consisted of every man in fighting age in the country where the French ballot recruitment had left massive untapped reserves of manpower.
Speaking of mobilization…
In 1870, Prussia and her allies went to war with the most detailed and most expansive mobilization plan in the world. Each German regiment was a formation recruited from its own district: when mobilization came, it could be brought up to wartime strength with reservists and be on a train to the front in a matter of days. Rail transport and telegraph was used to terrifying effect in the German mobilization of men and materiel, all of which was meticulously planned out years in advance. In merely 18 days the German states had mobilized 1.2 million fighting men and had transported nearly half a million to the French border: a mobilization in record time never before seen in history.
In France things were the polar opposite. French mobilization plans were astonishingly shoddy and lacking in detail, and everything rapidly degenerated into chaos. Regiments that recruited from the whole of country departed half-strength for their concentration areas while their reservists tried to catch up: stories of reservists from the German border who went to report to depots in southern France or even Algeria, and not even manage to reach their regiment(which had long departed the depot) before the war ended were commonplace. The supply arm of the French Ministry of War was an underfunded husk, bureaucracy was still in peacetime structure, and staff work was nonexistent.
All this would suffice to explain such catastrophe… but we still have to talk about planning.
Bavarian Infanterie-Regiment Großherzog Ernst Ludwig von Hessen, on the advance during the Battle of Wissembourg. Wissembourg was the first battle of the Franco-Prussian War, and a noticeable German victory that started off a string of German victories. Over the next 13 days after Wissembourg, Germans would win four more battles and completely encircle the French Army of the Rhine.
The German side had access to what today is so inherent an element of warfare, but back then was all but unheard of: a general staff, one that was first established in 1806. This was a body of military officers entry to which was open only to graduates of the Prussian War Academy, and even those graduates had to demonstrate exceptional talent: entry to the General Staff was entirely merit-based.
Reformed in 1857 by the Chief of General Staff Helmuth von Moltke, this General Staff was a wholly apolitical body singularly dedicated to planning and conduct of war at the highest level. It drafted mobilization and general operational plans, and directed conduct of operations. It was not only the first, but in 1870 the only such organization in the world, and its existence imbued the German forces with a finesse, precision and efficiency that nobody else possessed.
On the other hand, I realize this starts sounding repetitive, but French planning was… wait for it… chaotic. In fact, ‘chaotic’ is too much: it barely existed.
With a strong standing army, France’s only chance at triumph would’ve been an immediate and rapid attack before the superiority of German mobilization could be brought to bear. But let alone making such an attack, the French military didn’t even have any plans for such an attack: the Ministry of War had no planning function, the Staff Corps was only a vessel for transmitting orders, and Napoleon III’s personal staff was a collection of courtiers rather than staff officers. The only actual planning was wholly defensive in nature, and the closest thing to an ‘offensive plan’ was a rough draft that was little more than an order of battle left from 1868. And even that plan proved useless, for French mobilization devolved into such chaos that let alone first contact with the enemy, that plan didn’t even survive the first days of the mobilization.
Preußische Kriegsakademie in Berlin. At the time the Franco-Prussian War broke out, only forty people every year graduated from this most prestigious school, and only twelve were handpicked by Moltke himself to be trained even further, supervised directly by him, to serve in the General Staff. This exclusive corps of Prussia’s best officers meant that the German preparation and planning for the war was as different from the French chaos as night from day.
There is no kind way to put it. Where the well-trained parts of the French army were entirely up to their German counterparts on the tactical scale, the whole conduct of the war on the strategic scale couldn’t possibly be bungled any worse than it already was. The Franco-Prussian War was truly a display of just how one-sided war can be between those prepared for the last war and those prepared for the next. The French army was relying on institutions, structures, organizations and strategic doctrines left over from the time of Napoleon and no longer able to do what was required of them, while Prussia was armed with a broad selection of groundbreaking innovations in the field of military organization and mobilization- innovations so vital to the art of war that they form the core of our way of warfare even today.
France declared war on Prussia on 19 July, with broad elation of the public and sweet dreams of ending the war in Berlin. On 2 September, 104.000 men, a third of the cream of the French army, surrendered in Sedan along with their Emperor, their attempt to relieve the remaining two thirds where they were besieged in Metz resulting in a complete failure.
In less than six weeks, France, the country that the whole world considered the greatest land power in existence, was comprehensively smashed.
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I assume Bismarck was aware of this superiority, and Napoleon wasn’t. The question is, why?
“There is no kind way to put it. Where the well-trained parts of the French army were entirely up to their German counterparts on the tactical scale, the whole conduct of the war on the strategic scale couldn’t possibly be bungled any worse than it already was”
“unsuccessful attemt to relieve disaste
… (more)Pattern of ignorance….!?
The franco Prussian war did last 6 months and 10 days, the next one 4 years and 3 months.
For the first few years, of Hitler’s rule, the Jewish veterans of the Great War could rest if not ‘easy’, but at least somewhat undisturbed.
For those first few years, they had a seemingly inexorable protector looking out for them, in form of Reichspräsident Paul von Hindenburg. Hindenburg wasn’t exactly a man wholly fond of Jews, and had expressed anti-Semitism in the past: but his anti-Semitism didn’t even remotely approach the levels typical of the National Socialists. More importantly, Hindenburg was an old minded man with old ideals, who kept dear the memories of the Weltkrieg in which he had played so major a role.
Hindenburg, in his old age, was hardly the most vigorous of people, and his health was declining. Nevertheless, in certain issues, he could prove an inexorable obstacle to Hitler. As a war hero and reliable head of state, Hindenburg was probably the most popular politician in Germany, and as Reichspräsident he held the power to rule by presidential decree, dissolve the government, or fire the Reichskanzler(that is, Hitler) if he desired. And this power wasn’t just theoretical: it was backed by a broad popular support, overwhelming loyalty of the Army, as well as members of Der Stahlhelm and the old Freikorps veterans: these latter two, through their traditional party DNVP’s alliance with NSDAP, formed a major part of the NSDAP’s support base, yet they wouldn’t stand with Hitler against Hindenburg.
For this reason, when the NSDAP drafted a civil service law hot on the heels of the Enabling Act, a law that would effectively force all non-Aryan civil servants to retire, and when Hindenburg wrote to Hitler expressing stern disapproval of this treatment being forced upon veterans of the Great War and their relatives, the Nazis acted immediately. The law was amended in a matter of days to exclude anyone who could prove frontline service in the First World War, their immediate relatives, and those who’d been in civil service continuously since the start of the First World War.
But inexorable though Hindenburg could be, he was not immortal: by the time Hitler came to power, the man was well into his eighties, and cancer was gnawing at him.
On 2 August 1934, the 86-year old field marshal died in his home at Neudeck. Before his body was even cold, it was announced that the title of presidency would remain formally vacant and Hitler be the head of state and government both, in accordance with a law passed one day prior with Hindenburg on his deathbed. He would be interred next to his wife at Tannenberg Memorial, with one of the most magnificent funerals Germany ever witnessed: his corpse would, eleven years later, be hurriedly evacuated from where it was buried for fear of defilement by the Soviets, and the monument itself was first partially looted by Soviets for materials and then fully demolished by Poland in 1949. Its marble would later be used for a variety of construction projects, including the Communist Party headquarters in Warsaw.
In the months following Hindenburg’s death, the privileges he’d seized for Jewish veterans of the Weltkrieg were slowly rolled back, and finally vanished with the Nuremberg Laws. Reichsbund jüdischer Frontsoldaten, a Jewish veterans’ organization built upon the tenet of fierce and steadfast loyalty to Germany, was outlawed in 1936 and formally dissolved two years later. Though the few, who had friends from the war now in places of authority in the new regime, found themselves protected by those friends, many of those old fighters were treated no different from Germany’s other Jews.
Thus was the fate those men, as fierce and as loyal citizens as any Germany had ever possessed, their sacrifices ignored, their loyalty disregarded. The cold earth took most of them, in secrecy and in silence, and many were simply forgotten.
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Honestly, I always wondered why did the Jews draw the short straw. Literally ever since Egypt.
Was it just a case of “that’s how we’ve always done it?”
It might be. After a point the whole thing gets self-perpetuating. Misconceptions that were used once to justify atrocities proceed to drive opinions for centuries.
Because other two Abraham ic religion hate Jews and those ppl are mostly in power in most of history
This is a really sad story and affected my family personally (my grandfather fought in WWI on the French front and was persecuted in WWII).
The Jewish Germans that fought in that war often did not even consider the Jewish part in them, if they even knew about it. What they went through is unfathoma
One of those “Jewish Germans” was Otto Frank,who served as a lieutenant in the Heer during WW1.Frank later became famous when his daughter,Anne,wrote a diary describing the 2 years the Frank family hid in an antic in Amsterdam.The reward he received from his country was the murder of his family-incl
… (more)You see, Morgen was a crafty fellow.
Before the war began, Morgen was a graduate of the Hague Academy and a judge in Stettin, but in 1939 he was dismissed because of one of his decisions in a case connected to the Hitlerjugend. No longer a judge, Morgen enlisted in the Waffen-SS, and served as a soldier in France, before someone sufficiently high up realized ‘hold on, guys, we have a graduate of the Hague Academy and we’re sending him to the frontline?’
Thus, Morgen returned to practicing law- this time as an SS judge. The SS as an organization existed separate from German civilian law, just like the military: it had its own courts and legal apparatus.
Now settled in Krakow, Morgen began to hunt for corruption that had already started to grow rampant in the SS, and soon found a very severe case indeed. Everything revolved around Apfelbaum, a major Jewish-owned fur company whose owner had fled Poland after the German invasion and left the company in the hands of his mistress, the daughter of a German and a Russian emigre.
Jaroslawa Mirowska, said mistress, had then proceeded to get involved romantically with a Waffen-SS cavalry officer, Albert Fassbender, who brought the commander of his brigade, Hermann Fegelein into a plot the three of them concocted to pretty much embezzle everything that the company owned.
But they didn’t expect Morgen. The man hunted the trail like a bloodhound, and eventually went before Himmler with not one but two secrets: not only was this trio embezzling confiscated state property, but also Mirowska, who as a declared volksdeutsche and Fassbender’s mistress had been such a common sight among the SS, was not merely wholly Polish but also almost certainly a spy for the Polish underground.
It, however, didn’t go as planned. Fegelein was one of the Reichsführer’s favorites, and Himmler completely buried the whole affair, and Morgen was sent again to the frontline as part of the Wiking division.
But while Morgen spent several brutal months in the East, Himmler began to realize just how severe corruption in the SS system was becoming, especially with regards to confiscated properties, and eventually had Morgen recalled from the front and basically told him to dig out corruption.
And he dug- not merely for corruption, but also for other illegal activities, One of his first big catchs was Buchenwald’s former commandant, Karl-Otto Koch, which he began to investigate after Josias Erbprinz zu Waldeck und Pyrmont, a ranking SS and Police general began to find evidence that Koch had prisoners murdered in Buchenwald.
Buchenwald was a concentration camp: while conditions in it were abysmal, and prisoners dying from such conditions were ‘acceptable’(legally speaking), murdering them wasn’t: indeed, after an eight month pursuit, Morgen would eventually nail Koch on a number of murder and corruption charges, leading to the man being executed in the same camp he once commanded one week before American forces captured the camp grounds.
Now, so far, Morgen is more or less doing his job. But things are about to change.
Morgen in his SS uniform, earlier in the war- wearing the insignia of a mere SS-Oberscharführer. By the time the following events happen, Morgen was an SS-Sturmbannführer: equivalent to Major.
Morgen wouldn’t actually have managed to peer behind the curtain, if not for a lucky turn of events that saw a small package of unusual weight confiscated in military mail and brought to his attention. The package contained three lumps of crudely smelted together dental gold, weighing several kilograms in total.
That dead prisoners would have any gold fillings removed and sent back to the Reichsbank wasn’t a secret-though this package was headed for a private address, so, clearly the result of someone embezzling gold. With that evidence, Morgen could just have the Kriminalpolizei arrest the offending thief, and pat himself on the back for another corruption case cleared.
But this amount of gold meant at least several thousand deaths even if everyone had a filling, and realistically, a couple orders of magnitude more than ‘several thousand’. Far beyond accident, poor conditions, or even a typhus outbreak.
Morgen decided to investigate, and led a special commission to Auschwitz camp network, touring the entire camp.
What he found was horrifying.
Morgen had been aware of the simple existence of concentration camps, of course, but these constructs, the extermination camps, were a whole new thing. Even as a high-ranking SS judge he’d been, as many were, unaware of it. At first, he tried to take that to his superiors, including chief of the Gestapo Heinrich Müller, only to realize this had official backing. Official backing that went very, very far.
He might’ve had Himmler’s personal backing to investigate corruption in the SS, but even that backing had its limits. Even that backing wouldn’t let him arrest people for doing official state business, and given this, as far as he could tell, probably traced back to the Reichsführer himself, if he were to try he’d certainly lose that backing very quickly and wouldn’t be lucky enough to just be sent to the East.
So, Morgen got crafty. He couldn’t nail these people for the extermination he’d so recently learned of… but he could nail them, those involved in extermination or concentration camps, on a whole number of other crimes. And so, he fell on the trail like a bloodhound.
Koch wouldn’t be Morgen’s only target. His list included:
- Hermann Florstedt, Commandant of Majdanek, charged with corruption and executed,
- Amon Göth, Commandant of Plaszow, charged with corruption, violation of regulations regarding treatment of prisoners and failure to provide adequate food to inmates, ruled insane by medical team and placed in an SS mental health institution,
- Karl Küntsler, Commandant of Flossenbürg, charged with drunkenness and debauchery, dismissed from his post,
- Maximilian Grabner, Auschwitz’s Gestapo chief, charged with corruption and murder, dismissed from his post,
- Adam Grünewald, Commandant of Herzogenbusch, charged with maltreatment of prisoners and excess cruelty, sentenced to 15 years in prison, later posted to a penal unit and died there,
- Gerhard Palitzsch, Auschwitz personnel, charged with theft and Rassenschande, sentenced to death, sentence commuted to penal service and expelled from the SS,
- Hans Aumeier, Auschwitz economic officer, charged with corruption and dismissed from his post,
- Waldemar Hoven, Buchenwald physician, charged with murder of an SS officer who was a witness in one of Morgen’s investigations, sentenced to death, released in 1945 because of a severe shortage of doctors,
- Alexander Piorkowski, Commandant of Dachau, charged with corruption, dismissed from service,
- Martin Sommer, Buchenwald guard, charged with excessive brutality, sent to a penal unit,
- and Hermann Hackmann, Majdanek guard officer, charged with murder, sentenced to death, but sent to a penal unit.
He even charged Adolf Eichmann with corruption, but Eichmann had enough friends in high places, and Morgen never managed to secure an arrest warrant for him.
Morgen would end up doing more than that: after the war, the former SS judge served as a witness in the main Nuremberg trials, then at several lesser trials(most notably the Pohl trial against members of the SS-Wirtschafts-und Verwaltungshauptamt), and the 1965 Frankfurt trials against former Auschwitz staff. During the Nuremberg and accessory trials, he was severely beaten twice(both during the Ilse Koch trial) to force him to make a false testimony, which he steadfastly refused to, but his actual testimony still nonetheless proved valuable.
How did Morgen manage to get away with all that?
Because the man was clever enough to know what charges he couldn’t bring against those he targeted, even though he wanted, and so, he made care to dig out evidence for charges he could bring.
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This is a standing ovation UPVOTE. I give them out to draw attention to Quora’s lack of distinction between good answers and great answers. Standing ovation upvotes go only to the best answers, and yours deserves one. Feel free to also start (sparingly) giving standing ovation upvotes!
What a fascina
… (more)Don’t know to do that, but yes Standing Ovation and Three Cheers!
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Alexander KnepprathWhy? It’s a great answer, and when I go to that space I find more fantastic answers. It’s a great way to spread knowledge on the platform.
This would all be painfully hillarious if it weren’t tied to the greatest tragedy in history
Or, alternately, it’d make one hell of a crime thriller.
Seriously, look at it. Bloodhound investigator, check. Corruption, check. Obfuscating superiors, a great crime being covered up, espionage, beautiful spies, multiple turns of fortune, inter-organization rivalries… it bloody writes itself.
Michael MulvaneyHave you tried the Bernie Gunther novels by Philip Kerr? Berlin cop ends up in the SS. It follows him from prewar Berlin as a cop, through the war serving Reinhard Heydrich in the SS and post-war as a war criminal. You can imagine the personal conflicts of conscience versus expediency a.k.a. staying alive. Not as dark as it sounds, the novels are written in a humourous Chanderlesque style (given the subject they needed to be!). Give them a go, you won’t be disappointed.
I’m currently reading a novel called The Butchers of Berlin.
Morgen is a central character. I never imagined he has an actual historical figure, guess I lack imagination.
The book is great. It is set in 1943 Berlin and it’s so dark it’s almost funny, almost.
I would love to read a biography of him or w
… (more)They did. They did improve the early war tanks. They improved the ever-loving shit out of the early war tanks.
Compare the changes between the Panzer IV Ausf. B(since Ausf. A was little more than a mass produced prototype), and the most advanced model of that tank, Ausf. H(yes, there’s Ausf. J, but that was mostly a downgrade from H).
In a time span of less than six years,
- Hull front armor nearly tripled, from 30mm to 80mm.
- Side armor doubled from 15 to 30.
- Turret front armor nearly doubled from 30 to 50, and side armor doubled from 15 to 30.
- The engine changed from an 246.6 hp Maybach HL 108 to an 300 hp Maybach HL 120.
- Tracks were widened from 380mm to 400mm to lower ground pressure.
- Schürzen armored skirts were placed on hull sides and turret sides and rear.
- The transmission was changed to a brand new SSG 77, considerably more reliable and better for cross country travel.
- The 75mm main gun was changed from a L/24 howitzer weighing 490 kilograms to a L/48 high velocity gun weighing 750 kilograms, which had nearly twice the muzzle velocity and more than twice the armor penetration.
- The commander’s cupola and the driver’s visor was changed.
- Track wheels and the front sprocket were modified.
- New, better optics for the main gun were installed. Twice.
- Turret mounted smoke grenade launchers were added, though later discontinued.
This isn’t even a complete list.

The evolution of a tank: up top, an Ausf. C in 1943 relegated to training duties, below an Ausf. H at the Saumur tank museum.
When it was built, Ausf. B weighed just under nineteen tons. By 1943, all those upgrades had meant that Ausf. H weighed twenty-five tons. That’s a thirty percent increase in weight.
Not even the Israeli ‘Super Shermans’, which first began to see service in late fifties(a decade and half after the Sherman’s original introduction) and were last phased out in the eighties, saw this degree of increase in weight over the base model. It came close, but it didn’t reach it.
The design work on Panzer IV had begun in 1934. The first mass production model began to roll off factories in 1936. That was an old tank. By the time the first prototype T-34’s were delivered to the Soviet army, the Panzer IV had already been in service for over four years and received three upgrade packages(and would receive a fourth one month later). When the first Shermans entered production the Panzer IV had six years of service and six upgrade packages behind it.
Germans squeezed every last drop of potential they could out of their early war tanks. They were altered and upgraded to degrees few thought possible. But those were old vehicles. There’s only so much space in them, their turret ring can only take so big and so heavy guns, their transmission can cope only with so much weight.
At some point, you reach a limit. To tanks like Panzer III or IV, no further upgrade was possible.
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I’ve always thought that adding the interleaved wheels to a Panzer II to make it into the Lynx (Luchs) was about as “cute” as an armored vehicle could possibly get. It was probably a speedy little reconnaissance tank.
The Germans had their own nickname for the Panzer II Luchs, they called em “Little Tigers”. Just like the Tigers could be referred to as “Furniture Vans”.
Jędrzej Jaxa-RożenSounds very unprobable to me. The "Möbelwagen" (your furniture van) was a name used only for the self propelled 37mm anti-aircraft gun on a PzIV chassis. Even other AA Pz IV versions have had different nicknames, I’ve never heard of calling a Tiger like that. If anything, the boxy shapes of Nashorn/Elefant SP guns would be more probable contenders than Tigers.
The Stugs ended up being “upgrades”. So did the Marders and every other variant the Germans turned into assault guns, armored anti tank units or armored artillery.
Because in 1870, Austria wasn’t this:
Austria was this:
‘Austria’ of the era wasn’t a German nation-state that could simply be absorbed into Germany like Bavaria or Saxony: it was a German state that ruled over a massive multinational empire. Germans, whether Austrian, Sudeten, Siebenbürger Saxons, or other tiny communities across the Empire measured maybe a quarter of its population: the rest were home to ten different ethnicities that simply couldn’t be part of a German nation-state.
If you tried to work Austria into Germany, you could get Austria proper, possibly Bohemia(which is home to a large German minority and even its Czech population has been a part of the German political sphere for centuries) could be integrated, and maybe you can keep the pro-Imperial Slovenia and the tiny Italian part in Trento. And even that much’s a big stretch: even Bohemia is a very, very big ‘if’.
The rest? The whole of Hungary, Slovakia, Transylvania, Galicia, Croatia, all that’s a no-go. You can’t integrate Slovaks, Hungarians, Romanians, Serbs, Poles, Ruthenians, Croats into a German nation state.
Austria, as a matter of state policy, never actually pursued a policy of German unification for this reason. Austria couldn’t conceivably merge into a German unified polity without shedding her multi-ethnic empire, and such a solution was unacceptable to Austria. Thus, any solution attempting to absorb Austria into Germany in the latter half of the 19th century would inevitably be stillborn.
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Germany wasn’t entirely mono-ethnic: the German empire included parts of Poland, with ethnic Polish local majorities.
That was partly a result of making Germany contiguous, as there were majority-Prussian enclaves in Poland (notably East Prussia).
Your main point stands, though: Austria was majority n
… (more)The polish part of germany came with annexation. The poles might eventually get absorbed into the german population and the idea of poland would cease to exist
The (Second) German Empire contained parts of (what had been and would be again later) Poland because it was based on the Kingdom of Prussia, most of which was not part of Germany.
Daniel James BergerI do believe I said that.
Excellent analysis. I’d just remind everyone that, every time your answer says what “Austria” thinks or wants, that’s shorthand for “the consensus of the German and Hungarian elites who dominated the Austro-Hungarian Empire.” There was very little that that “Austria” in the wider sense of “the peopl
… (more)I believe that AH didn't help France out in the Franco-Prussian war because the Hungarian leaders put their foot down.
Martin Liubefore francoprussian war, prussia attaacked AH and Denmark recently right?
Well, that depends kind of on where they lived, and what happened to the Nazi regime after Hitler’s death.
But I don’t see the relevance here. Do I misunderstand something? Is the simple fact of having struggled against evil supposed to absolve one of all sins and render them immune to any criticism? Is Winston Churchill, a man thoroughly racist by every single account, somehow freed from any and all of his faults and detestable beliefs because he’s fought against Hitler?
If so, are you willing to hold everyone to this same standard? Does Stalin now enjoy immunity from being condemned for the millions of souls perished through dozens of ruthless policies? Is Henry Morgenthau now absolved of having sought the murder of twenty million Germans?
You are trying to present the world with a false duality: to either exalt Winston Churchill as a man with no flaws, no faults, and nothing to be criticized in his thoughts or actions, or dream lustfully and longingly of an alternate history, where Hitler would’ve won the war. Your implication is that anyone who dares to suggest that not everyone who fought against Hitler might’ve been very avatars of virtue merely because they fought Hitler, anyone who levies the slightest criticism or disapproval towards these figures, is only doing it because they’re all Nazis, and they wish the Nazis had won.
And I reject that duality: for it’s nothing more than a bald-faced attempt to silence valid criticism by shrieking and baseless accusations. Of course, I suppose that the similarity of these moves to the Nazis’ notorious penchant of regarding any criticism as treason, and thus the irony inherent in your question, did not occur to you.
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“A good act does not wash out the bad, nor a bad act the good. Each should have its own reward.” Stannis Baratheon
I actually had this conversation in a fallout discord.
The legion may be terrible, but the NCR is extremely flawed, therefore the Legion is great! Sort of logic.
But instead of a brutal dictator who believes his entire empire are better when they are Chattel, we just have the guy who, is pretty much t
… (more)This is, surprisingly, a bit of a legal grey area.
This might come across surprising, and I understand people’s outrage at the suggestion posited in the question, but in actuality, there’s genuinely very little in pre-1945 laws of war that actually concern treatment of civilians. Most of the older laws of war are primarily about the conduct of combatant operations: and there’s almost nothing that governs treatment of civilians, and what little there is is extremely vague.
Pretty much the only relevant thing is Article 50 of 1907 Hague Laws and Customs of War on Land:
No general penalty, pecuniary or otherwise, shall be inflicted upon the population on account of the acts of individuals for which they cannot be regarded as jointly and severally responsible.
And this raises a whole bunch of problems.
There’s practically nothing that governs reprisal killings: this vagueness was why, as of the Second World War, the internal codes of conduct in most of the militaries across the world(including the US) still ruled things like taking civilian hostages to enforce demands or reprisal killings as legal and acceptable military behavior[1].
Lidice, morally monstrous and reprehensible though it is, existed in such a grey area. The village was strongly suspected of both harboring Heydrich’s assassins and aiding and abetting partisans: which would’ve meant they’d be harboring and aiding combatants that fought without identifying insignia- a war crime.
Thus, this means to rule whether Lidice is a war crime under international law of 1942, we need to answer the following questions:
- Were the villagers at Lidice harboring partisans, and is the German reason for their suspicion strong enough to reasonably regard the villagers as collaborating with partisans?
- Is ‘collaborating with partisans’ a collective act that can elicit a collective punishment?
- Is a reprisal killing even an acceptable form of ‘general penalty’?
- Is there anything that guides what kind of reprisal is appropriate for what actions?
You won’t find these in rules of war for the time. The best you can do is to try and interpret from the extremely barebones rules of the Hague Convention, full of holes. People have argued both for and against Lidice being a war crime, but the fact of the matter is, there’s too much in the international law to conclusively rule it not a war crime, and too little to conclusively rule it a war crime.
I believe that Lidice should be a war crime, but that’s neither here nor there: my personal opinion doesn’t dictate international law.
For the record, the extreme barebonedness of the aforementioned laws is exactly why in the 1949 Geneva Conventions, Article 3 explicitly states(emphasis mine):
(1) Persons taking no active part in the hostilities, including members of armed forces who have laid down their arms and those placed hors de combat by sickness, wounds, detention, or any other cause, shall in all circumstances be treated humanely, without any adverse distinction founded on race, colour, religion or faith, sex, birth or wealth, or any other similar criteria. To this end the following acts are and shall remain prohibited at any time and in any place whatsoever with respect to the above-mentioned persons: (a) violence to life and person, in particular murder of all kinds, mutilation, cruel treatment and torture; (b) taking of hostages; (c) outrages upon personal dignity, in particular humiliating and degrading treatment; (d) the passing of sentences and the carrying out of executions without previous judgment pronounced by a regularly constituted court, affording all the judicial guarantees which are recognized as indispensable by civilized peoples. (2) The wounded and sick shall be collected and cared for.
International law may often be a toothless thing, but it’s still good that now, this question is clearly and conclusively settled. Of course, we can’t consult this law to judge events seven years older than it, but Lidice was neither the first reprisal massacre in human history, nor it’s going to be the last.
Footnotes:
[1]: Ironically, Germany was one of the few countries that at the start of war didn’t have an official provision in its military code of conduct concerning reprisal attacks against civilians- indeed, the somewhat famous ‘Ten Commandments of the German Soldier’ explicitly stated that civilian populations vere inviolable.
Of course, as history shows us, as is often the case in war, these commandments often found themselves thrown out of the window when rage ruled over, superior orders dictated, ideology demanded or military necessity required. As is so often the case, laws and rules of conduct could and did go unheeded.
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Also from the German POV (and POV of any country that accepted the formation of Protectorate, which at 1942 was quite a few countries.), there is a question whether laws of war even apply.
Yeah. The whole thing is one massive legal mess.
Michal SoukupTrue, but eventually we got at least some responsible parties and justly (laws be damned) hanged them.
Sounds like a certain Vietnam village was justified then
My Lai happened after the 1949 Geneva Conventions. Therefore, it’s wholly and totally a war crime.
Even if it were still legal (and it wasn’t, by then), it certainly wasn’t justified.
The entire crisis would’ve fizzled out.
The Serbian state might’ve been bold and brazen, but the Serbian government were composed not of idiots. Everyone in that cabinet were entirely aware that the ultimatum, though harsh, was entirely within Austria’s rights to demand: Serbia had placed her hopes on Germany holding back the Austrians. When Berlin told Vienna that it wouldn’t intervene in Austrian decisions where Serbia was concerned, that hope had vanished, and Serbia now had the Austrian ultimatum hanging over her head.
Serbian ministers pleaded to the Russian embassy that the ultimatum couldn’t be accepted by any independent state and to help Serbia against ‘Austrian aggression’, but behind closed doors everyone was aware they had no choice. On the evening of the day of the ultimatum, Prince Alexander sent a telegram to the Tsar stating that Serbia would be willing to accept any Austrian demand that the Tsar counseled them to accept.
By the morning of 25 July, with only vague assurances from Russia, a sleepless Prime Minister Nikola Pasic had already begun to draft a reply of total concession to the Austrian ultimatum. It was in this environment that telegrams from Miroslav Spalajkovic, the Serbian envoy in Saint Petersburg, began to come- informing the Serbian government first of unofficial but strong assurances of support and then of an impending Russian general mobilization.
With Russia’s backing, Serbia now could afford to refuse. With barely a few hours until the deadline and the need to make the reply look as reasonable and concilliatory as possible(while not actually conceding anything), there was so little time to draft a proper reply that the Austrian ambassador Baron von Gieslingen was handed was corrected in places by pen, notes written by hand in places, and several places crossed out- there hadn’t been enough time to get the text typed into another clean document after it was entirely agreed upon.
Without Russian support, Serbia caves in to the ultimatum, and as long as that happens Austria-Hungary neither needs nor wants war. We know this, because literally four days before the assassination of Franz Ferdinand, Austro-Hungarian Foreign Minister Leopold Berchtold had the ministry’s resident expert on the Balkans, Baron Franz von Matscheko, draft a memorandum on Austrian situation in the Balkans, in consultation with both Berchtold himself and Second Section Chief Janos Forgach.
Matscheko Memorandum can be strongly argued to be rather paranoid, but it is as recent an illustration of Austro-Hungarian foreign policy aims, and this work authored by the three most senior drivers of Austro-Hungarian foreign policy in the Balkans regards any war, general or local, as neither imminent nor desirable: though skeptical as to whether it’d work, Matscheko argues that efforts be made to draw Serbia away from Russian orbit by way of economic and diplomatic concessions.
The Austrian ultimatum might be right in what it demands, but it’s also harsh. Though the brazen murder of Franz Ferdinand gave an end to any hope of diplomatic reconciliation between Serbia and the Dual Monarchy, even that wave of hatred is willing to acknowledge Serbia accepting the Austrian ultimatum as enough of a punitive measure. Fundamentally, Austria doesn’t want war.
If Serbia does not get support from Russia, she completely accepts the Austrian ultimatum, and if she completely accepts the Austrian ultimatum, the entire crisis fizzles out.
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I thank you for such an astonishingly eloquent and in depth counter-argument.
Lorenzo CapaldoTruly an argumentative masterpiece, isn't it?
“the entire crisis fizzles out.”
For a couple more years, maybe. But all the major powers were planning to go t war with one another eventually. Britain, as you yourself have stated on a previous occassion, wanted to snuff out budding German power.
Germany was planning to conquer and ethnically cleans
… (more)“For a couple more years, maybe. But all the major powers were planning to go t war with one another eventually. Britain, as you yourself have stated on a previous occassion, wanted to snuff out budding German power.”
A possibility. Not a guarantee- inevitability is a bold claim that’s rarely correct
… (more)Niko NištaAs German and Austrian industry continued to develop, they would have needed more and more raw materials and new markets to dump their outputs. Britain and France were hogging the colonies, meaning that conflict was inevitable in the long run. Heck that’s why Hitler and his marauding thugs were handed power over Germany on a silver platter by the Huggenbergs and Krupps and Stinneses. They had dug themselves into a massive hole with investments they could only pay back by producing and selling huge amounts of goods, for which there was simply no market in Germany. And the foreign market was closed to them by foreign capitalists, who were in an identical pickle, and who sure as hell didn’t need foreign competition. If Hitler were to invade and enslave the East however, he could bail them out with the spoils of war! It’s not because the capitalists were stupid to make these bad investments. It’s because capitalism forces them into it. If your competitor makes a massive investment that allows him to undercut you, you are forced to reciprocate or go out of business. The only way to pay off massive investments is to jack up production. Jacked up production results in dropping prices, which destroy everyone’s profitability. Even Murray Rothbard conceded that crises of capitalism are crises of overproduction he just tried to blame it all on central banks, somehow. There were only two different ways out of this mess: And these capitalists more or less knew it. The sure as hell didn’t want to stop being rich. Which meant they were going to walk over as many corpses as necessary in order to stay rich. Which meant imperialist war.
I’m with you until the last scentence. I think you’re mixing up the Kaiserreich with the Third Reich, there. Not that the Kaiserreich never did anything bad (see: Belgium) but they were not obsessed with racial policies like the Nazis.
I find that the concept of Islamic slave soldiery is often found confusing by people- especially by people from the Western world.
This is very understandable. In the Western world, when someone mentions slavery, what people think of is chattel slavery- where slaves are treated as, and bought and sold as, property, and are usually used for unpleasant labor under harsh conditions. Thus, when someone talks of the Mamluks, the Janissaries, the ghilman, people stop and think ‘Wait. How do slaves wield influence and power? How do you trust them with arms? How the heck do you make elite troops out of enslaved men?’
And well… it’s a combination of reasons, but when you dig down to it, it is a wickedly clever element to have in an environment of the power politics of the old world.
A Mamluk in traditional full armor, with lance, shield, sword and pistol.
Now, imagine that you’re a hypothetical Islamic monarch. Like most of the monarchs in the world, your power isn’t absolute- the lands you rule over is a semi-feudal patchwork, with many emirs, beys, and tributary kings paying homage to your mighty throne.
But of course, you are the superior among all of those, and their loyalties are fickle and ever-changing. As the mighty Sultan you are, you cannot be expected to merely rely on having their fragile support for your power base, can you? No. You need a support base that must be strong, and must be loyal. You need soldiers loyal directly to you, and not to the emirs that recruit them, administrators that obey your commands and your will without any ties to established power structures that might need nepotism.
Throughout history, rulers in such positions inevitably turned to outsiders. Importing foreign experts to your court is an age old monarchical tradition: one that creates a mutually supporting power base. You as the monarch will favor your foreign servants, because they form your power base- and they will remain loyal, because their interests are inevitably tied to your well-being. As foreigners, they will have no local support and indeed will be resented by established power structures: if you go down so will they, and thus it’s in their best interest to ensure you do remain strong.
The prelude to the Mamluk system would be the ghilman: a new class of soldiery introduced to the Islamic world by the future Abbasid Caliph Al-Mu’tasim, but back then he was not yet Caliph nor held that regnal name. Al-Mu’tasim took the general idea of imported foreign courtiers to a new level- he began buying Turkish(mostly, with some Caucasians and Iranians in the mix) slaves from slave markets, and began to train them as a household force of salaried elite troops. This was also joined by foreign retainers, volunteers and freemen.
This served as a mutually beneficial arrangement for all involved. The slaves got a life far more prosperous and with prospects of advancement than they had before Al-Mu’tasim bought them, the freemen had prestige and chance for advancement and triumph, and Al-Mu’tasim had a small but fiercely disciplined, fiercely loyal army that knew very well their continued good fortunes depended on him.
Whether ghilman were originally slave soldiers, fully freedmen, or existed as something in between(more on that later) is unknown: but whatever it was, his small but elite force of personal troops won Al-Mu’tasim his throne. The effectiveness of relying on professional armies recruited, as slaves or freemen, from warlike foreigners was demonstrated, and ghilman spread through the Islamic world like flame.
And now we come to the Mamluks.
The Mamluks emerged as a full standardization of the initial, haphazard organizations of early ghilman corps. The initial drive came, depending on who you ask, either from the Abbasid regent Al-Muwaffaq, or the Fatimids in Egypt. The recruits would be young male slaves, mostly from warlike populaces: Turks(especially Cumans and Kipchaks) and Georgians were especially favored, but Armenians, Copts, and though rarely even Sudanese could be found. Those boys and young men would then be raised as dedicated soldiers, usually in secluded barracks and training grounds with relatively little interaction with the world outside, with rigorous discipline. Once his training was complete, a Mamluk would then occupy a strange spot in between being free or enslaved- they weren’t free men, but they were not ordinary slaves either, and their presige, salaries and influence made the organization’s members envied by many freemen.
The result was a disciplined, well trained force, loyal to their owner/patron for both prospects of advancement and protection from the existing local power structures that disliked them as foreigners and coveted their position, and loyal to their fellow Mamluks by their renowned esprit de corps.
Though Mamluks and most ghilman were technically slaves, subject to the will of their monarch, in practice they lived lives like nobility, and held the prestige and power to match. This meant that in practice, they were closer to trusted and valued subordinates than actual slaves, and the mutually supporting base between foreigner technically-slave-soldiers and their patron became a thing that held up many an Islamic regime.
In theory, the system seems infallible. While technically slaves, nobody actually considered those men actual, traditional slaves. The slave-soldiers would exist outside existing power structures, and be loyal to their lord they derived power from, and serve with discipline and loyalty- in return, their lord would safeguard their privileges, their prestigious position, and reward them with advancement: many a slave soldier would eventually grow to serve as emirs or viziers.
There is only one problem.
The key problem with creating such a corps of foreigner soldiers is that, when you keep this organization around for long enough, there’s a considerable risk that what you end up doing will be creating another established power player, a player that now has all that formidable military and administrative power and prestige that they used to keep your dynasty on the throne. A player that commands the greatest military force in your realm, and which is fiercely loyal to itself owing to that esprit de corps.
And thus, as time went on, in a lot of places, Mamluks and ghilman and other slave soldiers first became kingmakers, and then kings themselves. In Egypt, Emir Aybak, a Kipchak Mamluk, took power in 1250 by Mamluk backing and married the widow of the Egyptian Sultan who’d died fighting the Crusaders, establishing a Mamluk rulership over Egypt that lasted until 1517, when the Ottoman Empire came south, with the Sultan’s Janissaries at the vanguard- yet another class of Islamic slave soldiery.
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Ahh, but Mamluks were chattel too. They were their owner’s property.
As I see it, the problem is that we underestimate how much of a revolution is the idea that slavery is abhorrent. Nothing really other than societal will prevents the continuation of slavery. Once that hurdle is cleared, it immediat
… (more)I think the fact that being a “slave soldier” was actually sought after by many, say a lot about the crappy lives most other people had. I think it was seen as “not to bad”, since most of these slave soldiers were taken from groups that were oppressed “dhimmis” anyways?
Emmanuel-Francis Nwaolisa OgomegbunamPeople also sold themselves into slavery. We often forget, the options in the past was often between ‘bad’ and ‘terrible’.
Thanks for this answer Cem. From my Western/Christian perspective the Islamic slave soldier has always been a tough concept to wrap my head around. Of course, this military caste has some parallels to the famed Praetorian Guard - in theory loyal to the ruler, but they end up being ‘kingmakers’ at ti
… (more)Even harder to wrap your head around would be how a slave could be Grand Vizier and run an empire. Take the case of Ibrahim Pasha, slave and vice of Sultan Suleyman of the Ottoman empire. He was absolutely the second man in the empire and would be running the vast country when Suleyman was on milita
… (more)This is an important thing to realize about the Ottomans’ place in European diplomacy.
On paper, the Empire was the Great Devil: an infidel horde from the East, intent on devouring the Christian world, the great Turk against whom every European had a sacred duty to fight… officially. But in the real world, almost nobody actually cared about that, unless it was politically feasible and viable to care.
A brief look throughout European history at the time shows that many of the European states had no problems whatsoever with making dealings of all manner with the Ottoman juggernaut where they saw an opportunity, or even preferred dealing with the Sultan rather than their sectarian opponents.
The situation of Serbia as a loyal vassal of the Empire is certainly not unique- examples of similar dealings abound. The seemingly sacrilegious Franco-Ottoman alliance is famous, but it’s hardly unique. Whether it be Imre Thököly leading Hungarian Protestants in war against Austria under the Sultan’s banners, John Zapolya appealing to the Porte for help against the usurper Ferdinand, King Frederick of Bohemia as well as the Prince of Hungary both offering tribute to Osman II if he’d just help them against the Habsburg power in 1619, or the Dutch Revolt requesting(and getting) support from the Ottoman Empire, throughout the Ottomans’ period of strength it’s the norm, rather than the exception, for various Christian powers to seek the aid of the Eternal State.
Yes, many Serbian lords did bend the knee to Sultan Bayezid I, and Serbian knights went on as one of the most valuable parts of the Sultan’s army. Four major lords of Serbia fought against Wallachia at Rovine, and two of them perished on the field of battle. At Nicopolis it was a mixed fresh reserve of Ottoman sipahis and Serbian knights that broke the back of the crusader army. Stefan Lazarevic, the Sultan’s brother-in-law, led his knights again for the Sultan at the Battle of Ankara, nearly turning the tide for the Ottomans on three separate occasions and at the end managing to salvage the imperial treasury.
If you’re looking at this relationship between Turks and Serbs from the perspective of today’s relations, it might seem astonishingly unlikely that such a combination ever came to pass. How would an Orthodox Serbian prince and a Muslim Sultan of the Ottomans come to be brothers in law? How come the Sultan’s Serbian troops could show not merely grudging servitude but loyal ferocity in their overlord’s service?
But in a world where, almost a century after two of Serbia’s highest lords died for the Sultan at Rovine, the Pope himself would appeal to the Sultan to come defend Rome from the French, I assure you it is neither unlikely nor unheard of, and the Serbs of Lazarevic were neither the first Christians in Europe to willingly stand with the Ottomans, nor the last.
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People generally fail to realize that ideological purity is a very expensive luxury commodity
The Papacy and its allies had even allied with the Bey of Karaman in 1443. Not even the Battle of Zlatitsa—-and the more famous Battle of Varna in 1444—-was purely Muslim vs. Christian (the Ottomans were allied with the Genoese, indicating that this specific conflict may have been more political tha
… (more)That ship class right there, Kaiser Friedrich III-class, is exactly why it was common for German ships to have lower caliber but better ballistics guns.
Now, when Germany first started building its war fleet, the ships were being built entirely up to typical gun calibers. Indeed, the Brandenburg-class, the first German pre-dreadnoughts(and the only class before the Kaiser Friedrich III) were armed with 280 mm guns, which actually gave them heavier armament than their contemporaries in the British Centurion-class, armed with 254 mm guns.
Indeed, the Brandenburgs were originally planned to have 240 mm guns, but that was upgunned to 260 mm and then 280 mm during the design phase for fear that the lower calibers wouldn’t suffice. So, what changed?
Well, when the successor to the Brandenburgs, the Kaiser Friedrich III-class, was being designed, nobody was actually contemplating a downgrade in caliber: all preliminary designs were made with 280 mm guns, the same MRK L/40 gun from the Brandenburgs.
Then, Vizeadmiral Hans von Koester had a bright idea.
Now, Koester argued, that since battleship engagements at the time happened at close ranges and ships were designed to fight at such ranges, they didn’t quite need an 280 mm gun to fight enemy ships at that close range. A smaller caliber did reasonably well, if not quite as good, when you were fighting from a range of a couple thousand meters. But, if they lowered the caliber to, say, something like 240 mm, they wouldn’t be losing too much in the name of hitting power, but they’d be firing much faster than the measly one shot per two minutes rate of fire of the 280 mm MRK L/40.
The Kaiser loved the idea, and with his backing, the Koester faction got their proposal passed. There was one tiny little problem: the gun Koester wanted didn’t actually exist.
The only 240 mm gun in German naval arsenal was the aging and somewhat stubby L/35 that was put on German coastal defence ships. That simply wouldn’t do: Krupp was directed to immediately design a quick-firing 240 mm gun. Now, this was a risky move. The ships were being laid down, and the same turrets wouldn’t fit the old 280 mm guns. If the Krupp design didn’t work, the brand new battleships would rely on the old L/35’s.
But the gamble worked- and it worked spectacularly.
SMS Kaiser Karl der Grosse receiving her main guns.
Krupp’s new 240 mm SK L/40 quick firing gun was an excellent weapon. With a brand new sliding wedge breech, hydro-pneumatic recoil system, and a 40-caliber barrel the new gun could fire six shots in the time it took for the old 280’s to fire one, making the relative weakness of the individual shells easily forgotten.
This set the trend in German naval command to favor guns with better ballistics and faster rates of fire over sheer caliber. The same excellent Krupp gun would arm the succeeding Wittelsbach-class, and it would take until the Braunschweig-class to return to 280 mm guns: not the old MRK but a brand new quick-firing Krupp design, the SK L/40, able to fire two shots a minute.
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Besides, a smaller gun also means weight savings, and the Kaiser Friedrich III-class battleships were relatively small (at 11000 tons) for the time period. It seems like the Germans put the weight into speed, armor, and 15 cm secondaries, which would be effective at closer ranges as well.
That was a perfectly rational choice when the ships were designed, as the 240 mm guns were perfectly capable of penetrating the armor then in use at the standard battle ranges. But it proved a disastrous choice in the long run. What could not have been envisioned was the revolution in gunnery which
… (more)Friedrich III-class was already doomed to obsolescence by the very virtue of being pre-dreadnoughts.
The Dreadnought Revolution, the result of improvements in ship design, gun loading, fire control and turbines, in a single stroke rendered dozens of battleships across the world obsolescent, second-ra
… (more)Joseph S. HerndonThere is a difference between obsolete and useless. It is true that all pre-dreadnoughts were obsolete during World War I, but many continued to serve usefully in secondary theaters of war. At the time of Jutland the British even had a squadron of pre-Dreadnoughts stationed at Dover. However, those German battleships with 240mm guns would no longer have even been capable of successfully fighting another pre-Dteadnought armed with 12-inch guns because of the increased battle ranges brought about by the gunnery revolution. So, the Germans had wasted a lot of resources building numerous ships based on an ingenious, but ill-timed idea.
Now, make no mistake. When it was handed over to Poland in 1945, Stettin was German. There is no disputing, debating, or even arguing this: the last time a Polish polity ruled over the city was in 1138, and that rule had lasted less than two decades, having started with the Polish overthrow of a local West Slavic chief ruling the region as a German vassal and ended when the region broke away wholesale with the death of Duke Boleslaw III of Poland.
The first German settlement in Stettin dates back to about 1150- eight centuries before the city’s handover to Poland. Some seventy years after that, Holy Roman Empire seized Pomerania from the Danes, starting a long lasting German rule over the region, only interrupted between 1630–1720 when the city was part of Sweden.
By 1939, Poland hadn’t had any control or influence over the city for eight entire centuries. In a massive city numbering more than 300.000 people, less than 2000 Poles lived- almost all of them relatively recent migrations from Posen to work the city’s industries. Indeed, there were more inhabitants of Stettin who were of French origin than there were those of Polish origin, as the rulers of Prussia had settled there many Huguenots, who were fleeing from religious persecution in France.
In short, as was the case for pretty much all of the German territorial losses to Poland after WW2, Poland had no actual, legitimate, valid claim to Stettin. None. It’s not even possible to debate this.
But.
Fact of the matter is, unjust though it was, Stettin was torn from Germany in 1945. And this wasn’t a Medieval conquest, where the population of captured cities, if they didn’t get wiped out during the sack, just… stood there and became subjects of another monarch. This was the era of nation states. Some of Stettin’s Germans were simply killed, some of them were taken to former concentration camps repurposed by the NKVD to serve as slave labor, and the rest were pretty much kicked out at gunpoint.
Don’t fall prey to illusions. German Stettin is dead- killed off in 1945, its people murdered or exiled. Today, there are only 1014 Germans living in the entire West Pomeranian Voivodeship- no, not Stettin, but the entire Polish voivodeship that includes Stettin, with a population of 1.7 million, is home to a thousand Germans. 0.06 percent of the population.
German Stettin is dead. Its people are gone. Its monuments are gone. Even most of the city itself is gone between the sheer damage of the war and sections razed under Soviet or Polish administration. There’s no bringing it back.
If you’re expecting a return of Stettin to Germany today to be the celebrated return of a lost province to where it belongs, you’re wrong. That lost province is dead. There won’t be any Germans eager and happy to be part of Germany again: those Germans are long gone. There are only Poles now, and there’s no point or reason in throwing four hundred thousand Poles into Germany for the sake of making a map look differently.
This doesn’t repair the injustice of 1945- the people who suffered that injustice are all bones now. It would only beget yet another injustice, yet more suffering, yet more agony.
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As a result of ww2 Poland lost 30% of her eastern territory, which is more than the German territorial losses.
From 388 000 km2 Poland was reduced to 312 000 km2, being the first victim of the German and Soviet aggression in September 1939.
Yes- they lost the most underdeveloped and economically backwards parts of 1939 Poland, parts where Ruthenians were an overwhelming majority, in exchange of some of the most infrastructurally, agriculturally and industrially productive parts of Germany and the right to kick out all those troublesome
… (more)Lidia FedorskaNo, it wasn’t hugs and flowers when Poland stopped the Bolsheviks from marching west to support the communists revolutionaries in Western Europe. “The Russo-Polish war was the one serious attempt made by Moscow to carry Bolshevism into Western Europe on the points of bayonets.” Wrote in his memoirs Walter Krivitsky, Stalin’s dissident agent. Regarding the lost territories, we don’t go on and on about the losses in the east. I’m surprised that people who are not even German can’t get over the losses of Germany in the east.
Would you really trade Szczecin and Wrocław for the Polesie Marshes? I mean, my question may sound not too diplomatic, but I am asking it not for the sake of trolling, rather to really understand your mentality. So, why would the Poles complain so much about something that’s clearly been to their ad
… (more)Lidia Fedorska“So, why would the Poles complain so much about something that’s clearly been to their advantage in every single aspect (local economy, infrastructure, climate, even the population homogeneity)?” Poles don’t complain so much about the border changes and homogeneity. Poles complain about the constant complaints that Germans lost all this territory unjustly. As if it’s the Poles’ fault, we shouldn’t be there and we should give it back.
Hello German language was unificated in late decades of 19 century. German poet Ernest M. Arndt expressed his confusion in this matter “Is it Prussia? is it Swabia Is it along the Belt where the seagull glides? O no! O no! The fatherland must be greater still! “ These swabian-speaking or prussian di
… (more)German nation isn’t one of the youngest national identities in Europe. Nowhere near close- it’s actually quite old. The concept of Germany as a singular entity rather than a collection of disparate states is as old as the 9th century, when the monarchs of East Francia began to be referred to as King
… (more)Stanisław SłotaWhat you wrote is quite consistent with the fact that the first German state was the German kingdom before the founding of HRE. However its matter of time, when states or empires ceases to exist. National identity could survive collapse of state organisation. The oldest national identities are the French and English nations that were created after the Hundred Years' War. Both nations were created by state and the state could be a prison for the nation, could limit national society. Such national emancipation happened after French and the American Revolution. Also modern German nation was created state after unification by Napoleon. Such a problem arose for those German nationalists during the Napoleonic Wars, when German nationalism arose in the clash with the French occupier. Zealous German nationalists calling on all Germans to fight, they were unable to assess who is and who is not German. And where the German borders begin and end. German borders did not coincide with ethnic ones. The historical boundaries of the Sacrum Empire, as well as the borders of Austria Empire contained tens of millions of people who did not speak any of the German dialects. Even the distinction between Germans and German-speaking peoples (Dutch, Scandinavians) was not obvious. Also Bismarck during uniting German state , did not think in national terms, but in dynastic terms, seeing them as enlarged Prussia, where subjects of Protestant Hohenzollerns could not be majority Catholic. Therefore, Bismarck was not interested in joining the Catholic Austria into Germany.
And the Polish language and identity just stopped in 1795, only to be revived by Napoleon for a few years until 1815, and then stayed dormant until 1916?
Which naturally explained the Polish emigration to the US. They didn't have any self-identity and wanted to be Americans…
Which is obviously balderd
… (more)Stanisław SłotaPrague with above 100000 inhabitants in 1611 was largest and most influenced Czech city within HRE between 1300-1611. While the French and English national identity were created by national Kingdoms after the Hundred Years war the population of HRE was deeply antagonised by confessional wars that led to demographic decline. It delayed creation German identity awarness until German Confederation ( Deutscher Bund) which was an association of 39 German-speaking states in Central Europe created by Napoleon. 1569 marks the creation of the early modern Polish nation. In that year, the Polish and Lithuanian nobility established their "Polish Lithuanian Commonwealt" . First Republic ended in 1795 but national identity survived until second Republic in 1918.
Germany issuing its ‘blank cheque’ to Austria-Hungary was motivated by the unheard of, exceptional, sacrilegious situation of the two countries being, y’know, allies.
People pretend that the German ‘blank cheque’ is some unheard of, ridiculous, exceptional promise beyond the bounds of European diplomacy. This is not true. This was never true- this conception is merely born out of the messy myth of the Central Powers’ exclusive guilt for the war. It isn’t just false- it is a lie.
The much-loathed German blank cheque was this statement by Chancellor von Bethmann-Hollweg(emphasis mine):
Finally, as far as concerns Serbia, His Majesty, of course, cannot interfere in the dispute now going on between Austria-Hungary and that country, as it is a matter not within his competence. The Emperor Franz Josef may, however, rest assured that His Majesty will faithfully stand by Austria-Hungary, as is required by the obligations of his alliance and of his ancient friendship.
This ‘blank cheque’ was basically Germany telling Austria-Hungary, “Hey, mate, remember that alliance we signed back in 1879? That still stands, mind- if Russia does anything, we’re gonna back you up, just like we promised.”
Now, yes- technically, you could argue that the ‘blank cheque’ covered more than the possibility of a Russian attack on Austria, such as things like a French intervention or an Austrian attack on Russia, neither of which would have invoked the obligations of the Dual Alliance. But fundamentally Austria had no desire whatsoever to assault Russia, and a French intervention against Austria would’ve been mostly a toothless declaration as France didn’t exactly have much of a way to assault Austria.
Therefore, while it’s technically broader than Germany’s actual treaty obligations, the ‘blank cheque’ practically was only a reaffirmation of Germany’s existing treaty obligation to defend Austria from Russian attack. That is all there is, and asking why was it even issued and why Germany chose to stand with Austria-Hungary is tantamount to asking why Germany didn’t throw her only real ally right under the bus in a legendary act of diplomatic perfidy.
The irony of it, of course, if everyone else had too taken Germany’s much-maligned ‘blank cheque’ policy, the entire crisis wouldn’t even erupt. The conflict would’ve remained where it should have, between Austria-Hungary and Serbia, towards the latter of which no Great Power had any treaty obligations. Without assurances of Russian support, Serbia would’ve caved to the Austro-Hungarian ultimatum, and the entire seminal catastrophe would’ve been averted.
Russia’s former Prime Minister and now disfavored reformer Count Sergei Yulyevich Witte would state in the last days of June that the upcoming war a foolish pan-Slavic adventure from which Russia could gain nothing. Shame nobody listened.
Witte would die on 13 March 1915 as a bitter and old man sensing the impending doom. Two years later, on the exact same day, Tsar Nicholas II would fail to enter his own capital now held by revolutionaries, and would abdicate three days later.
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Why is the question never asked in reverse? People place special culpability on Imperial Germany for not reigning in Austria and yet nobody says the same of Russian favouritism towards Serbia or even of France’s equivalent assurances to Russia that it would support them in any course of action.
Because it’s Germany, and ergo it must be the most warmongering and evil and saber-rattling state to ever have existed.
There’s two great devils of modern Western consciousness- anything associated with pre-Bundesrepublik Germany, and anything associated either with Islam or with a skin tone that can
… (more)That’s because, contrary to Cem’s assertions, Russia and France did not give a blank cheque to Serbia and Russia respectively. They warned them to exercise caution and restraint, and spoke of military support as the last resort only after all other possible options were exhausted.
Russia advised Serb
… (more)People need cardboard villains.The thought that UK, France were not saints creates discomfiture.
To understand that, we’ll have to go back almost a century in history. The year is 1931, and Germany is in political turmoil, being torn apart at its seams by increasing political extremism.
The 1930 election has completely upset the situation in Germany’s fragile politics. For one, the social democrats are now watching the political fallout of their right-wing rivals in the DNVP’s decisive defeat in 1928. What the social democrats celebrated in 1928 proved to have severe consequences- the party’s chairman, moderate nationalist Kuno Graf von Westarp, resigned in disgrace and was replaced by Alfred Hugenberg, who is a radical through and through. Even with his first elections in 1930 being another brutal defeat, Hugenberg still holds a non-negligible 41 seats in the Reichstag.
But that’s the least of the social democrats’ problems. The KPD, led by the radical communist Ernst Thälmann and funded directly from Moscow, have won another 23 seats. Even more shockingly, riding on the wave of unrest from the collapse of the Brüning cabinet, the NSDAP skyrocketed from a measly 12 seats to a staggering 107, making them the second largest party in the Reichstag.
While social democrats are still the largest party, the combination of three radical parties in the Reichstag now measure 225 of the 577 seats. That’s a scary amount.
And further on, there’s the question of the streets.
A vehicle of Der Stahlhelm in Berlin, advocating for the DNVP candidate Theodor Duesterberg in the 1932 presidential elections.
The situation in the politically violent ground is not in the favor of the social democrats. The National Socialists by late 1931 have an armed mob approaching 400.000 in form of the Sturmabteilung. Der Stahlhelm, a paramilitary associated with the DNVP, is even more terrifying- not only it’s the largest paramilitary organization in the entire country, it’s anything but a mob: it’s a veterans’ association, its members battle-hardened veterans of the Imperial German Army, and served in the Freikorps afterwards. They are well trained, disciplined, and hard as iron- and now it’s not the old monarchist Westarp but the radical Hugenberg controlling them.
Now, the social democrats aren’t too worried about the communists. For one, of these groups they had the weakest(although the most aggressive) paramilitary, and that paramilitary, the Roter Frontkämpferbund, has been banned since 1929. Of course, everyone knows the organization continues to exist illegally, but it makes things a bit harder for them. Furthermore, nobody in Germany wants a communist takeover other than the communists- so if Thälmann tried something particularly harsh, the social democrats can rest assured that at least both Der Stahlhelm and the German army will intervene.
But make no mistake- the German Army and the social democrats have been at odds since, well, about since when the SPD was founded. It’s possible that they might come in to assist the social democrats against the National Socialists- the Junker officers of the Reichswehr are not fond of Hitler and his crowd. But they do see Hitler as an useful tool, so the aforementioned possibility is uncomfortably slim- and if the nationalist and monarchist DNVP were to make a move, nobody will pull their asses from the fire. The monarchists don’t like them, the National Socialists hate them, and the communists despise SPD more than they despise anyone else.
Now, SPD isn’t toothless. It’s got its own paramilitary- well, technically, though it’s officially a nonpartisan organization though dominated by social democrats. Reichsbanner Schwarz-Rot-Gold has about a quarter of a million fighting men, and hard men too: Reichsbanner is another veteran’s organization. But that’s nowhere near enough.
For this reason, when Hitler, Hugenberg, and a whole bunch of other prominent German political figures(including several Hohenzollerns, retired generals Hans von Seeckt and Rüdiger von der Goltz, Stahlhelm leaders, and NSDAP officials including Röhm and Göring) met in the town of Bad Harzburg and formed a loose political alliance, the Harzburger Front, the SPD went into utter panic.
The NSDAP delegation at Bad Harzburg: including people like Göring, Röhm and Himmler.
This was a disparate coalition of disparate opinions, with only one key thing in common: none of them wanted a democratic Germany. Thus, the social democrats reacted quickly. The Reichsbanner was merged with associations of trade unions, workers’ clubs, party organizations, and pretty much anything of use and formed into a central organization to manage both election campaigns and paramilitary matters: the Eiserne Front. Its insignia was designed by Sergei Chakhotin, a Russian emigre in Germany: three arrows in a circle.
Nobody actually knows what exactly the symbol means, though a collection of possibilities were raised. Some claim the arrows were symbolizing Eiserne Front’s three elements: the SPD, the workers’ unions, and the Reichsbanner. A particularly popular interpretation was that it represented opposition to the Weimar democracy’s three enemies: monarchists, communists, and National Socialists.
SPD poster from the July 1932 elections- at top saying ‘Against Papen, Hitler, Thälmann’.
Of course, while this technically suffices to answer the question, there’s an ironic side to this story that deserves mention. This might seem strange, but the sworn enemy of the Weimar communists, the group that most their ire, hatred and hostility was pointed at, wasn’t the monarchists or the Nazis- it was the Social Democrats. KPD and Thälmann hated the social democrats with a murderous vitriol: both because they regarded them as traitors to the cause of socialism, and because they regarded the SPD as the driving and primary force of fascism in Germany.
And now ‘the real fascists’ were gearing up for a fight- both electorally and militarily. This simply wouldn’t do. So, just as the social democrats formed Eiserne Front to oppose the anti-democratic Harzburger Front, the communists formed an organization of their own explicitly to fight the Eiserne Front- they brought their banned party paramilitary back into the light, radically expanded it, and folded a whole bunch of other institutions and organizations into it.
This organization, formed explicitly to fight against the Eiserne Front, would be called Antifaschistische Aktion. Or, with its shortened and more commonly known name, Antifa.
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… (more)For this reason, when Hitler, Hugenberg, and a whole bunch of other prominent German political figures(including several Hohenzollerns, retired generals Hans von Seeckt and Rüdiger von der Goltz, Stahlhelm leaders, and NSDAP officials including Röhm and Göring) met in the town of Bad Harzburg and fo
It is ironic that a symbol of moderate socialist resistance to communism, Nazism and Monarchism has become the symbol of communist militants in the present day.
Actually not. Anarchists have pretty much always hated communists, and antifa today is more of an anarchist thing than a commie thing.
Shrivathsan Margam SThough I imagine an anarchist would have found a revisionist party like the SPD to be quite distasteful.
The last victory chance for the French vanished at around 2 PM.
The battlefield was home to three major fortified extensions of Wellington’s line, in commanding positions. Hougoumont, Papelotte and La Haye Sainte- with Fichermont further to the east of marginally less importance, and a significant portion of the battle would be fought over these critical positions.
Hougoumont is well known. Napoleon and Wellington threw a total of 46 battalions of infantry at the fortified farm, a total of 26.000 men fighting over that critical position. But far less known is the fateful position at La Haye Sainte: a commanding position extending right out of Wellington’s center, with every possibility of becoming a bayonet at his throat very, very quickly. And it’s primarily La Haye Sainte we will talk about.
Despite being easily the most critical of the three positions, La Haye Sainte was easily the weakest of the three. The large complex at Hougoumont started out with a large defensive complement of some 1000 Germans(I/2nd Nassau, reinforced by several detachments of jägers) and two companies of the British Guard, while Papelotte had another battalion of Nassauers totaling 900 men.
La Haye Sainte, however, merely had a weakened battalion of the King’s German Legion: only four hundred men at the start of the battle.
The events that would lead to the turning point of the battle came just past 1 PM, when an order from the Emperor himself went out, and Jean-Baptiste d’Erlon’s I Corps advanced with its full strength in an assault towards Wellington’s center and left.
On the very left, a brigade of Quiot’s 1st Infantry Division clashed with the British 8th Brigade of Scots and English. Danzelot’s 2nd Infantry Division crashed into the 1st Dutch-Belgian Brigade, and a brigade from the 3rd Infantry Division fought the British 9th Brigade. All along this line between La Haye Sainte and Papelotte the French found success- the Belgians falling back, the 8th Brigade retreating, and most of the 9th dissolving into a mob pursued by the Frenchmen howling for blood- the British 5th Infantry Division, home to the 8th and 9th Brigade, would suffer a brutal 43% rate of casualties in the whole battle.
Erlon’s corps assaults. Picture credit to Napoleon, His Army and Enemies.
But while the center of the forces facing Erlon’s assault faltered and fell, on the very edges of his flanks, the two critical targets of Erlon’s assault were holding out. At Papelotte, Nassauers held on with devoted ferocity, even throwing back the tip of the French advance with a bayonet charge more than once. But at the thinly held La Haye Sainte, the situation was critical.
Where Hougoumont was well connected to Wellington’s army for easy resupply and reinforcement, La Haye Sainte was almost isolated, and any column that might reinforce it or resupply it came under punishing fire from French artillery. The importance of the position was underestimated, and the small 400-man garrison of the King’s German Legion had only meager ammunition and little tools and timber with which to fortify. The commander of the battalion wrote that they did not even have an axe.
The French assaulted La Haye Sainte with a thousand-strong brigade, and French infantry flooded the orchard, firing upon the Germans holed up in the buildings. A reinforcement column of ten companies was drafted up to counterattack and link up with the beleaguered defenders, but the cuirassier brigade of Jacques-Charles Dubois caught them in the open and effectively wiped them out. Elements of the French infantry slipped past the farm and completely encircled it. Death seemed certain for the garrison of La Haye Sainte- and then came the turning point.
Trying to relieve the reeling center, Lord Uxbridge spearheaded the charge of two brigades of British cavalry. These were the cream of Britain’s cavalry- seven regiments of horse, including King’s Guard Dragoons, Royal Dragoons and the Royal Horse Guard. Sabres drawn and shrieking for blood, Uxbridge’s cavalry fell on Dubois’ cuirassiers still disordered after wiping out the reinforcements for La Haye Sainte, and utterly broke them. Then they fell on the left flank of the French infantry advance, and now reinforced by two more regiments of horse from the King’s German Legion rolled up d’Erlon’s advance on itself.
The French I Corps was entirely routed. Napoleon immediately ordered six regiments of lancers and cuirassiers from his own reserve to salvage the situation. The fresh French cavalry shattered their opponents and threw them back in a complete rout, but were then themselves repulsed by the fresh Dutch and Belgian cavalry. The situation was stabilized.
But then there is the question- what if the French had taken La Haye Sainte? Well, we actually can reasonably guess what would’ve happened, because the French indeed did take La Haye Sainte.
La Haye Sainte today.
The follow-up to the French rout was the famous massed charges of French cavalry against Wellington’s squares- a famous and exceptionally bloody affair. Massed ranks of French horse suffered terribly from the Allied fire, while several of Wellington’s squares were reduced to mere clumps by the end and several batteries were lost. But while that brutal carnage was going on, d’Erlon’s corps reformed, and went on the attack again.
The meager reinforcements they got barely enough to replace the casualties of the first engagement, the beleaguered defenders of La Haye Sainte began to weather the assault of a French brigade, with a howitzer battery moved up to provide close support in the attack. Enveloping the farm, the French assaulted with near suicidal bravery, and reinforcements in the form of a Nassauer company during an interval simply didn’t suffice. French engineers broke down doors with axes, and the King’s German Legion, out of ammunition, fought by bayonet for every building, until they were thrown out and forced to flee.
La Haye Sainte had fallen, and the French reacted quickly. French skirmishers and artillery pushed past the farm into commanding positions and began raking Wellington’s center with a withering fire. A counterattack by the King’s German Legion was cut to pieces. With the fearsome French artillery firing from so close, the ghastly sight forward of La Haye Sainte turned to a charnel execution. Wellington’s center began to reel, and the jugular of the Allied army laid open. All Napoleon had to do was a concentrated assault of infantry, along La Haye Sainte. Split Wellington’s army in half and put it to rout.
But it was far too late.
The village of Plancenoit, aflame and charnel with the dead- result of the brutal battle between the Prussian IV Corps and the Young Guard.
La Haye Sainte might’ve been the springboard with which to pierce the jugular of Wellington’s army, but such an assault needed men. By four in the afternoon, when the King’s German Legion was hanging on for dear life in the farmhouses, the bulk of the Prussian vanguard, von Bülow’s IV Corps, was arrayed for an assault towards the French right and rear. The available reserves Napoleon had hoarded just for the kind of opportunity that La Haye Sainte would have provided vanished in an instant as thousands of troops had to be routed to Plancenoit in hopes of stemming the Prussian advance. As the French were clearing up the last resistance from La Haye Sainte, Graf von Zieten’s I Corps met with Wellington’s beleaguered left flank.
The brutal slaughter at Plancenoit devoured half of the Imperial Guard, and most of Napoleon’s carefully hoarded reserve.
Still, the French tried. The final, bloody assault at that gap came from five battalions of the Old and Middle Guard. Against all odds, pounded by artillery, they broke through, sending the mauled center fleeing in chaos. The British, the feared Brunswickers, the King’s German Legion, the Nassauers, all were put to flight, and a jagged hole opened in the British center.
But there just weren’t enough of them. Hendrik Chasse led six fresh battalions of Dutch and Belgian infantry, with horse artillery in tow loaded with grapeshot, towards the weary French assault. Chasse led at the forefront, sword drawn, the Dutch fell shrieking on the French, and the vaunted Imperial Guard broke.
It was over.
The only hope for victory at Waterloo for Napoleon was in breaking Wellington before the Prussians could arrive to reinforce him. For that, the critical point was La Haye Sainte, as evidenced by how close to success even that last, desperate, vain gamble of the Guard came.
Had d’Erlon’s corps managed to seize La Haye Sainte in their first assault, had the bold bravery of Uxbridge’s cavalry not put them to flight and repulsed their advance, the entire sequence of events could’ve happened three to four hours earlier. The assault against Wellington’s center, instead of merely five battalions of the Guard, could’ve been done with thirty battalions of fresh infantry, before Bülow arrived to the battlefield and those reserves drained away. Wellington’s army would’ve shattered, and the Emperor would have victory.
But the brave garrison of La Haye Sainte did hold. Uxbridge did send his cavalry shrieking in a bold charge, and d’Erlon’s corps was put to rout. La Haye Sainte wasn’t captured until past five in the evening, the Prussians arrived to the field of battle, and by the time Napoleon had La Haye Sainte and with it his coveted opening to Wellington’s jugular, he no longer had the men to exploit it.
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Great answer.
Nicely explained and written. I love narrative history - such a better job of fleshing things out compared to dry numbers and stats.
An ‘evil’ belief, or for that matter, any belief at all, consists of three elements.
- The end. This is the ideal that the adherents of that beliefs aspire to. The final objective. This in itself is rarely evil: usually, it’s an entirely acceptable or at least understandable motive, and it might even be noble. Atimes, it might be a bit shady, but it’s usually in line with what you’d expect.
- The road. This is the lesser objective, the achievement of which will eventually lead to the achievement of the final ideal. This can be a single objective, but more often than not it’s a collection of objectives. This is the answer to the question ‘so, how do we get to achieving our final goal’?
- The means. These are the methods and direct actions with which objectives are accomplished: the answer to the question ‘so, what do we do to reach our end?’
Any one or two of those, or even all three can be evil, and you get different kinds of characters, mostly villains but also anti-heroes, anti-villains and depending on how dark your story is, even heroes out of the mix. To rely on tropes to explain, a man with a good end and good road but evil means gives you a Well-Intentioned Extremist, while getting all three evil gets you a Complete Monster.
In actuality, it’s rarely the ‘end’ part that is evil in real world evils. Greatest evils of history were condemned as such not because their final dream was loathsome, but because either the roadmap or the methods(or both) were.
So. How do we make an evil fantasy group?
Step 1, we give them an endgoal. We will give them an end goal that doesn’t have any problems of its own- at worst it’ll be a little shady, and it might even be heroic. Let’s say they are a group of nobles from the just-made-up Kingdom of Ascaron, who want the crown to delegate some of its powers to local nobles- that is, them. Alright, a sketchy goal, but let’s be realistic: they’re local magnates. Of course they’ll want power.
Step 2- how do they get a situation where they can make the king to relinquish such powers to them? Remember, they’re supposed to be villains: so at this point we need to give them some degree of villainity either here, at step 3, or both. Also, there has to be some logic to this decision: it can be flawed, or even false, but we need to be pick a method that our characters might have reasonably expected would work.
So, let’s say one of the bright minds among them, Baron Rassen of Longard, came up with the clever idea- the King’s son is only eleven years old, and if the stern and harsh King Kovodin II were to be replaced by his son and heir, as influential lords, Rassen and his friends would certainly have seats in the Council of Regents and could press the boy-king into passing the laws and decrees that would empower them.
Notice how things just turned dark. A moment ago, Rassen and his buddies were just power-hungry nobles: but now, they are contemplating regicide.
But there’s still the step 3: how do they make sure the boy succeeds Kovodin?
Well, argues our very morally unscrupulous friend Rassen of Longard, there’s no way we can assassinate Kovodin through his handpicked guard, and if they fail, that’ll put the king on alert. So, instead, those among them who hold the King’s trust the most will slowly counsel the king to muster his armies and assail that arrogant Kressia next door. Avenge the insult that the Duke of Kressia made to Ascaron’s envoys just weeks ago. And once the campaign begins, with the nobles leading their own troops under the King’s direction, the army will campaign into Kressia, all the while Rassen holds contacts with the Duke of Kressia. And thus, at the most opportune moment in the campaign, Rassen and his friends will withdraw with their troops or just fail to arrive on time, letting Kressia obliterate the king and his more loyal nobles. Voila!
And now, things turned from simply regicide to high treason. Evil? Heck yes.
Fundamentally, designing evil beliefs is not that difficult. It all depends on taking a final goal that ranges from noble to shady but never in and of itself becomes evil, and then marrying it to sub-goals and methods that are decidedly more unpleasant.
Because, fundamentally, the nature of evil is not difficult. Few evil people become evil or act evil because they have an evil ulterior objective and aim. Usually, such final goals, even if not noble, are at least understandable. What makes their actions and beliefs evil is not what they ultimately intend: but the way which they set about achieving it, and the methods they utilize- paths they follow and methods they use either because they truly believe it to be the best(or the only) way, or simply because that’s what they find easiest.
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I actually did exactly that for my one country in Faerja, only it fell apart on them as they no longer had a cohesive problem(Highlord) and dissolved into a principality type region with near-constant border warfare between all of them.
It gives a lot of material space to create and build stories wit
… (more)Nice thing about a story like your hypothetical is it is easy to make the situation any shades of grey you want; make the king a warmonger who got many of the family of these nobles killed in some pointless war, maybe they even believe the king got those people killed intentionally. Voila now there
… (more)The French for “see there” is voila (vwa-lah). A viola is a violin’s fat cousin.
Erich ZornI am going to blame that on auto-correct, definitely not my complete lack of knowledge on French.
Nashorn.
Looking at the massive caliber difference between the two guns, one expects the 128 mm K40 L/61 on the Sturer Emil, converted from the dreaded FlaK 40, to have had massively superior anti-tank performance. However, in that regard the gun was held back by two key factors: the muzzle velocity, while certainly respectable, fell far short of the extreme 1000 m/s of the Nashorn’s 88 mm KwK 43 L/71, and unlike the Nashorn firing the excellent APCBC-HE shell Panzergranate 39, the experimental gun on the Sturer fired a rather primitive APC-HE shell.
The end result was that the penetration power on the Sturer Emil was actually slightly inferior to the Nashorn’s long 88.
Further adding to this issue was that the KwK 43 was superior in almost all other respects. With an AT shell far lighter than the Emil’s shells, the KwK 43 was much faster and much less tiring to reload, and a combination of higher muzzle velocity and better mechanical accuracy resulted in significantly better accuracy. The KwK 43 had an astounding combat hit rate of 85% at 1000 meters and 43% at 2000, compared to the K40’s 68% and 22% respectively. The only advantage the 128 has is far better high explosive shells with 3.6 times the filler, making it a very good bunker cracker and general purpose gun.
If one gives the Emil the Panzergranate 43 APCBC-HE shells later developed for the 128 mm PaK 44, the comparison gets more favorable: this gives the 128 a noticeable boost to its penetration power, meaning it’s better at killing tanks, though not nearly as accurate as the long 88.
Still, while the 128mm is probably the better general purpose weapon, when you’re building a dedicated tank destroyer, you probably want the Nashorn’s long 88. There is a reason why it was the Nashorn that broke the world record for longest range confirmed tank kill in history, and then kept that record for nearly five decades until the Gulf War.
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Okay. First off, if you have any expectations as to the answer being an actual proper common or even rare pistol, temper them.
A regular handgun is nowhere near enough gun for a hippopotamus. Even the vaunted Smith & Wesson .500, with its intimidating almost four thousand joule muzzle energy, pales compared to the .375 Holland & Holland, with a near six thousand joule muzzle energy, and that big game cartridge is the absolute minimum recommended to hunt a hippopotamus. And that minimum recommendation is assuming you were being dead on with your shots.
Of course, it’s theoretically possible that the .500 might kill a hippopotamus- but that is an one-in-a-million shot right into the brain you probably shouldn’t expect against a charging hippopotamus.
No. We need something a lot bigger. And for that, we’ll have to ring up Pfeifer Waffen in Feldkirch, Austria, and ask for a gun that they originally built as an one-off for a Swiss gun enthusiast in 1903 but which they still continue to make to order to this very day, for the low, low price of about 18.000 dollars.
Meet the Pfeifer Zeliska .600 Nitro Express.
Yes. You heard right. This fires five rounds of the gigantic .600 Nitro Express big game rifle cartridge, firing a giant bullet with a muzzle energy in excess of eleven thousand joules. The entire gun is actually shootable with an… acceptable level of control, because the massive six kilogram weight of the gun absorbs a lot of the recoil.
Those bullets were designed to hunt elephant.
If there ever was a handgun that stood a decent chance, provided it’s in trained and calm hands, against a charging hippopotamus, this is probably it.
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Point of technical order; Handguns as small as a 9mm can KILL a hippo. Just not in time to save your life if he’s 40 meters away. There is a HUGE difference between KILLING an animal, and STOPPING him. Several rounds in the boiler room (heart/lung area) with a 9mm will eventually kill him… but not b
… (more)I'm not certain that a 9mm would even do that. Sure, it might die a few days later, but it might well not.
Paul FeistShot placement matters, of course…. but a full magazine (as the question indicates) near any major arteries, nerve junctions, or through a handy eyeball, and he’s going to die. Slowly and painfully, and he’s going to make sure you go first, but he’s going to die. It WOULD be possible to simply mill all reasonably vital areas, and the hippo to survive… but, it would be (in my opinion) unlikely.
Also, at that point, it's too slow to really be an ethical hunting method.
Paul FeistOf course…. 9mm was just an example of the extreme, not a suggestion.
Does that price include sending Halfthor Bjornsson to hold the damn thing for you?
If only.
Paul FeistI’d pay to watch a video of him firing that .600 pistol…
No but if you ask him nicely, he might oblige, he's terribly nice.
Patrick O'Neill“Hold that hippo for me, Thor”
A lot.
The true numbers are difficult to tell- there isn’t exactly a lot of studies on this specific topic. The most extensive is Josef Folttmann and Hanns Möller-Witten’s Opfergang der Generale, which I sadly do not own personally, though I have access to several secondary sources that allow me access to parts of that data. Even with Folttmann and Möller-Witten’s immaculate research, with the severe loss of most of the wartime German archives, it is… difficult to earn a fully reliable number.
In the Heer alone, in the war and its aftermath a staggering total of 675 German general officers died of various causes. The biggest cause of death was combat action: direct deaths by enemy action or resulting from wounds received by enemy action killed 223 Heer general officers. With 145 deaths, health problems, often related to the war, was the second largest reason, while 128 died in prisoner of war camps or in prisons they were incarcerated in after the war by the Allies.
64 killed themselves for various reasons, 53 were executed- 20 by Germany during the war, the remaining 33 by the Allies. 32 were declared missing in action, and 30 were killed as a result of accidents.
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The number of killed and seriously wounded is remarkably high because more than any other army in Germany high officers literally led from the front.
What war hereos!
Interestingly, I know of one who was kidnapped: Heinrich Kreipe.
Interrsting. By whom.partisans? Intel?
Cem ArslanThe Special Operations Executive- Kreipe was the commander of the 22. Luftlandungs-Division in Crete. The plan was actually to kidnap Friedrich-Wilhelm Müller, his predecessor, but Müller was sent to Chania as the island’s overall commander before the plan went into action. So they abducted Kreipe instead.
Have you ever met that racist person? You know the one I’m talking about. The one who argues he can’t possibly be racist because he has friends from the race he’s racist against, and wondered how can you be racist towards a group yet have friends from said group?
The problem against ideologies of racial contempt is that while you can base them on a logic that, while fundamentally flawed, at least can seem sound as long as you’re dealing with broad populations, things just fall apart when you are dealing with individual people. Because such ideologies are fundamentally founded on stereotypes: and while there are certainly people who fit those stereotypes, there are plenty who don’t.
A lot of thoroughly racist people have befriended or admired people from groups they hated, people they had personally come to respect and like. Some of them relinquished their beliefs because of that, while most simply ‘credited’ those people with qualities they considered unbefitting their race: naming their friends and admired acquaintances a credit to their otherwise lowly people.
A lot of Hitler’s, and other National Socialists’ favored Jews, fit this latter case. Maurice’s Jewish ancestry was remote- too remote for him to not be considered an Aryan under the Nuremberg Laws, but not remote enough for him to trace Aryan lineage back to 1750- then requirement for SS membership. But Maurice was among the oldest of the Alter Kämpfer: having been with Hitler since 1919, and he had the SS membership number of 2, junior only to Hitler himself. A model National Socialist and a proper old comrade, Himmler’s suggestion that remote Jewish ancestry made Maurice untrustworthy was preposterous to Hitler.
Eduard Bloch? Not like Maurice, Bloch was Jewish through and through, though well assimilated, and he wasn’t even an old Party comrade. But Bloch was a kind, compassionate man to whom Hitler owed much from his childhood, and the Nazis’ depiction of the average Jew could not be any more different from Bloch- when the man wrote a letter to his old patient and now the Führer, asking for help, Hitler didn’t just ‘help’: to ensure nobody would disturb Bloch behind his back, he placed the ‘noble Jew’ under special protection by the Geheime Staatspolizei.
Rosa Bernhardine Nienau was part-Jewish, a fact Hitler was well aware of: but the man by all accounts had a great love of children, and he had a five year friendship with the girl to the point that she became known as ‘the Führer’s Child’. And these three are not the only examples.
None of those ever put a stop to Hitler’s anti-Semitism. To him, those exemplary Jews or part-Jews whom he adored were merely an exception that proved the rule: while millions like them who never had the fortune to have met the Führer himself and gained his admiration or adoration went on to perish.
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Very astute observations, you limited your reply somewhat. I believe there is more to say, by you and us.
Racism is built into our DNA, we like humans over animals (usually) and the prejudices against others (tribes, races, families) have been part of our evolution as homo sapiens. It is unreasonabl
Thanks for an elegant assessment of the “but some are my friends” nonsense.
Nervous. Very, very nervous.
By 1941, Turkey was in an extremely tenuous position. The Soviet Union, our old friends during our War of Independence, had reversed course under Stalin and had begun to eye not only the old Imperial territories in Turkish east that were conclusively lost with the Treaty of Kars, but also the Straits themselves. On the other hand, there stood Germany across the border- a state with which we ostensibly had friendly enough relations, but the aims of the Reich were hard to know. Further complicating things, Britain was prodding us to see if we’d enter the war on the Allied side, and while Britain didn’t exactly have the power to force us, this put us in the crosshairs of a Reich that might decide that it’d be better off eliminating the threat before it struck at an unopportune time. And of course, even if Germany didn’t desire to attack us, that still left the question of Mussolini’s Italy hanging: after all, Germany hadn’t wanted to attack Greece either.
Still fighting to climb out of the ruin that the Great War and the struggle for freedom afterwards had left us in, we couldn’t afford another war, nor did we want one. This left the razor sharp path of strict neutrality for us to follow, while arming ourselves to the teeth so we could sell ourselves dearly when the time came.
Throughout the Second World War, Turkey was one step short of a state of war. Air raids shelters designated across the country, rationing and blackouts instituted, courses to train citizens on the realities of warfare set up, and the army and the economy mobilized for wartime, Turkey was bracing for a war that might have been right at the door, intending to sell our lives dearly if it came to it.
By 1943, the Turkish army had expanded to forty-five divisions(including one armored division) and five brigades(one cavalry, one armored and three infantry), organized into three armies and fifteen corps, totaling 1.3 million men under arms- two thirds of all people eligible for military service.
Soviet-produced T-26 tanks during a parade before the Second World War. These vehicles bought in 1932 was the first sizeable tank force of the Turkish army. By 1945, Turkish armed forces would have a rather sizeable tank arm consisting of an utter hodgepodge of vehicles, ranging from Soviet T-26’s, British Vickers Mark 6’s and Valentines, German Panzer III and IV’s, and American Stuarts and Shermans.
Turkey’s Second World War policy can be described tongue in cheek as putting all effort towards being a friendly, but extremely spiky hedgehog. It was centered simultaneously on maintaining friendly neutrality with everyone around us, while being as ready as humanly possible for any war that might come our way.
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But the turks were a major supplier and manufacturer for Germany. Most of the German tobacco they received for Retsma came from Turkey and the Germans paid in armaments, not in cash for them.
I mean… we were. That’s how neutrality works, you trade with everyone as needed. We sold them tobacco, chromium and other things, sold chromium and dried fruit to Allies, bought weapons from most people…
Georges GritsisDear Cem, I immensely appreciate your contributions. One thing has puzzled me about this period and I think you may help with the answer. Pan-Turkist movements gained some momentum in the late 1930s, due to support of Nazi Germany who sought to leverage Pan-Turkism to undermine Russian influence and in an effort to reach resources of Central Asia. Although Turkish government archives for the World War II years have not been released, the level of contact can be ascertained from German archives. General H. E. Erkilet (of Tatar origin and a frequent contributor to pan-Turkic journals) and General Ali Fuad Erdem regularly met with Nazi officials in the second half of 1941 and the early months of 1942, Nuri Pasa (Enver’s brother) being also present. Did the Turanist/racist fraction -consisting of Esat Bozturk, his assistant Nihal Atsiz, Cevat Altihan, Alperslan Turkes, Zeki Togan, etc…- inside Ismet Pasa’s administration expected that the USA would ally itself with Nazi Germany and attack the Soviet Union, allowing Turkey to join the fray and claim lands in Central Asia? In May 1944 Ismet Pasa gave a speech condemning Pan-Turkism as "a dangerous and sick demonstration of the latest times" going on to say the Turkish Republic was "facing efforts hostile to the existence of the Republic" and those advocating for these ideas "will bring only trouble and disaster", then had the Turanists’ brainchild Varlik Vergisi repelled. Nihal Atsiz and 40 other prominent pan-Turkists including A. Turkes, were subsequently tried and sentenced to prison for conspiring against the government. Although Ismet Pasa was convinced that Germany could never win WWII, why did he wait until March 1945 while German troops evacuated Athens on 12 October 1944, and by the end of the month, withdrawn from the southern Balkans? What had the competent general hesitate that long?
Friendly stance means that you keep the trade open. It was good to receive payment in wargear when it was the most important commodity at the time.
Plus, American Ford was supplying Germany with engines and German Krupp was supplying US with refined steel so tobacco is somewhat irrelevant.
On the side
… (more)Dan Karanja“…American Ford was supplying Germany with engines.” During the war itself?🤷♂️
I was actually about to ask you a question on what Turkey did during World War II!
I answer questions before they get asked.
I’m awesome like that.
Habib Fanny=D Apparently!
What was the purpose of taking Moscow first during WW2?
There were two main reasons- one political, the other operational.
The politics of it ought to be easy to guess. Fact of the matter was, in 1941 the Soviet Union wasn’t the most popular of regimes. Morale was low in the Soviet machine, discipline was questionable, and the decisive annihilation of the Soviet Army in the first months of the war further worsened the situation.
The fate of the Soviet war effort desperately relied on morale and the perception that the Union remained strong and resolute. At the heart of this was the capital at Moscow: the symbol of the edifice of Soviet power. Irrespective of its operational significance, the moral impact of Moscow’s defense or fall could be staggering.
Moscow was the symbol of the Soviet regime- you could evacuate the government, as the Soviets did in 1941, but you couldn’t divert the people’s perception of it. No matter its material import, the capital of a country carries a special importance to its people and its loss can precipitate a major collapse of national morale and will to fight- a collapse that the Soviets could ill afford.
However, there’s an even bigger reason.
This is a map of the Soviet rail network of 1941.
Pay attention to Moscow- how every major rail line goes through it, and how relatively sparse rail network is east of Moscow. Let us take a closer clip, so I can make an example and illustrate my Paint skills.
Let’s say you want to go from Bologoye to Tambov via rail, and it’s peacetime. The rail route you have to use is this:
But what if the enemy has advanced to the front, and taken the hub at Moscow? Then this is how the route has to look- the yellow line being the route, and red being the front line:
The new route is almost four times longer.
And remember- this only makes the generous assumption that the Soviets basically only lost the Moscow hub and retain at least some of the dense rail network to the East. If the Germans get to, say, the Gorky area… things will become a very quick catastrophe.
The war in the East was very much a war of rails- the only method of transport with the ability to operate over the staggering distances involved. The loss of a single rail line could have severe effects for people dependent on it.
The loss of the entire Moscow hub could be catastrophic.
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· No doubt Moscow’s early loss would have been catastrophic to the USSR, but then again the Red Army had a nasty habit of suffering though one catastrophe after another but survive nonetheless. Had Army Group Centre continued its advance east after elimination of the Smolensk Pocket I dare say Moscow
… (more)There’s only so much adversity that can be solved with force of will.
The russians survived the onslaught with force of bullets and tanks. They never ran out of either.
(in before Stalingrad myth)
Congrats on the new “ clash in the east “ blog . Couldn’t help but notice the moderators and contributors selected overall great choices , then I see who the co administrator is ….Alex Foster ? Not the most neutral choice IMO , his content is more then a little pro soviet .
This is from his profile p
… (more)Thank you, we got Cem Arslan (someone you follow), Dima-Vorobiev following this space and Andy Su to. The all star team. Also, the reason I asked people to down vote Susanna Viljanen because her claim that a second opening of the Italy won Kursk was poorly written, with it being mostly being specula
… (more)Stalingrad: the jewel of the Volga with its industries and rail lines. The jewel for which seven different countries' armies fought, and for which two million casualties were suffered.
Amateur military historian and fiction writer
Unlike what most of the current answers seem to think, Stalingrad had value for more reasons than Hitler throwing a temper tantrum at the name.
The key to Stalingrad’s importance lay in its industrial might. Stalingrad was home to the Dzerzhinsky Tractor Plant, built in the United States before being shipped to the Soviet Union, one of the largest tank factories in the entire world. By mid-1942, when the Soviets were still struggling with the many problems of setting up the recently evacuated factories beyond the Urals, it was one of the few of the giant tank factories still in complete operational status. Along with the Gorky Automotive Plant, the colossal tractor plant in Stalingrad worked feverishly to meet the Red Army’s immense material needs.
Dzerzhinsky Tractor Plant pictured from air, 1942.
The Dzerzhinsky plant alone would be reason to shut Stalingrad up, but it was not limited to that. Stalingrad was home to the equally gigantic Red October Steel Works, and the Barrikady Gun Foundry. Between the three of them, these factories were churning out immense amounts of war materiel. The Lazur chemical plant, producing phosgene, chloropicrin and hydrocyanic acid (all classified as chemical weapons) was also located in Stalingrad.
Furthermore, while not as significant as Moscow, Stalingrad was a major regional transport hub. It was the origin point of the main rail line to and from Astrakhan, and with the west of Don lost to the Germans, all rail connection between the Voronezh area to the northwest and anywhere south of Stalingrad had to go through Stalingrad, or divert far to the east and reach Astrakhan via Verkhniy Baskunchak. As long as Germans held on to Rostov, the only rail line of reasonable length from the Caucasus north to say, Tambov or Voronezh, was through Stalingrad.
Rail map of the Stalingrad area.
If you wanted to get from Voronezh in the north to Krasnodar in the south via train in 1941, which is a distance a little over 800 kilometers in a straight line, you had three routes. Your primary route would take the rail line towards Millerovo, then head to Rostov, and finally reach Krasnodar. That’s a bit over 900 kilometers, total.
If that rail line was cut for some reason(such as an enemy occupation of significant segments of it, including Rostov) your main route was to take the rail line to Stalingrad, then to Salsk, and finally take a straight rail line to Krasnodar: the total distance was around about 1300 kilometers.
If you lose Stalingrad as well? You first head east to Balashov, then from there to Saratov, take a train east and then south to Verkhniy Baskunchak, from there to Astrakhan, south to Kizlyar, and finally take the rail line to Krasnodar… for a distance not that short of 2800 kilometers.
The loss of Stalingrad would have cut off all major rail lines save the very long-winded Verkhniy Baskunchak route between the North Caucasus region and the whole rest of the Soviet Union. Coupled with the cut-off of the Volga river traffic, a vital transport avenue would mean that the transport of oil and lend-lease material from the Caucasus to rest of the Soviet Union, and men and military materiel from rest of the Soviet Union to the raging battle at the Caucasus, would be severely stifled.

German mountain troops manning an AA gun somewhere in the Caucasus region, September 1942. The Germans had thrown two German and one Romanian army into the push for the oil fields: for the Soviet personnel opposing them, the rail and river transport from Stalingrad proved a significant aid.
The blow to the Soviet war machine the fall of Stalingrad would have struck is one thing, but one also must keep in mind how dangerous the city must have looked to the Germans back during the summer of 1942 when they were debating whether to wait at the Don or go for the city. There stood one of the Soviets’ largest industrial hubs less than sixty kilometers from the banks of the Don. Certainly, when judging where should Germany’s ‘winter line’ be, it should have been and was considered how defensible a position it would be, and how fast before the rasputitsa season it could be achieved: in light of this, the Don made the perfect defensive position.
However, one also had to consider the ease with which the enemy could assault one’s positions, and in that summer of 1942 when the Germans considered staying in the Don bend, Stalingrad in such close vicinity must have felt intimidating. An accessible transport hub connected to the north, south, and east with river and rail, located right where any Soviet offensive intended to break the Don bend was likely to mass, to which troops, supplies, and reinforcements could be flooded with relative ease during preparation or offensive phase. And if that in itself was insignificant, any Soviet offensive prepared or deployed to a German defense of the Don bend would have the advantage of their war materiel produced nary a hundred kilometers behind them, in one of the country’s largest industrial centers. Germans would be defending the river bend from a torrent of tanks and guns produced right behind the battlefield.
German tanks cross the Don near Kalach, less than sixty kilometers from Stalingrad.
Did the city’s status as an important industrial center and transport hub, and its status as a significant threat to a German force not proceeding past the Don, justify the risk Germans took in sacrificing their highly defensible positions along the river Don in order to seize it? It’s a question that must be discussed, especially requiring one to decide how much of the Stalingrad catastrophe was because of the simple fact that Germans decided to go for the city, instead of the specific details of how they handled their assault, and of course what information the Germans had access to, as opposed to what we have, must be considered.
With all this in mind, there can indeed be a strong argument that important though Stalingrad was, it was not worth the military risk Germans took in trying to seize it. But accusing Germans of misjudging either the risks or the rewards involved is one thing, and claiming their focus on Stalingrad, or for that matter that of the Soviets, purely stemmed from who it was named after, as if the city itself held no value beyond what being named for Stalin gave it, is another. And it’s not a defensible, accurate, or historical position to hold.
That fateful year of 1942, in the City of Rats on the banks of the river Volga, Paulus’ 6th and Chuikov’s 62nd were fighting for something far more vital and far more tangible than the pride of two dictators.
Soviet defenders among the ruins of the Red October Steel Works.
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Germany won 89 medals in the 1936 Olympics- 33 of which were gold.
This wasn’t just a success for Germany- it was an overwhelming success. That was, and I believe still is, the highest number of medals ever won in the Olympics by an united German team. It surpassed the runner-up, USA, by a whooping difference of 33 medals(for the record, the third highest medal count was Italy, which got 22).
Yes, Jesse Owens won four gold medals in 1936: and make no mistake, I would not underplay his achievement. Four gold medals is an astonishing achievement, and Owens was one of the most successful athletes of the 1936 Olympics- which does indeed make it even more astonishing that the man was treated far better in Germany than he was in the United States. That the triumphant Owens had to use the freight elevator to get to the reception allegedly in his honor is famous- less well known is that the most successful athlete of the Olympics was working at a gas station to pay the bills within less than half a year of his return to the US.
Nevertheless, Owens’ very respectable achievement or not, fact of the matter was Germany achieved a tremendous success in 1936 Olympics: being the first country to beat the USA in the Summer Olympics since 1908(where Britain was the most successful country). In near every field, German athletes proved to be amongst the most successful.
Now, there’s no such thing as a superhuman race- though certain traits common to various ethnicities can be advantageous for particular sports activities, which means one can see in the Olympics various ethnicities overrepresented in certain sports. Nevertheless, while Hitler’s belief in Aryan supremacy didn’t have much merit… what was any commentator going to say about that, using the 1936 Olympics?
“Look! Look at the Olympics! That Hitler’s delusions of Aryan supremacy are false now proven by Germany decisively winning the Olympics-”
“Bob… you sure that makes sense?”
“Of course it does, Dave! They performed spectacularly at the Olympics! First time anyone beat the US in last six Summer Olympics! This is clearly conclusive proof that the Aryan supremacy is a falsehood!”
Make no mistake- I’m not a believer in Hitler’s delusions in this regard. Hitler’s belief in the Aryans’ inherent supremacy had extremely little merit to it- even his definition of ‘Aryan’ was shoddy, pseudoscientific, and without much in the name of real backing. For all intents and purposes, that part of his ideology was hogwash.
But if you’re trying to challenge someone’s belief in their own inherent superiority, I think it’d be wise to choose a topic of conversation that wasn’t a very significant success for that someone.
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But a rule requires only a few exceptions to be proven wrong. Aryans got stomped by people of a black ethnicity in a number of events, 800m is a pretty good example, & jesse owens ofc. I don’t see how its possible to simultaneously believe in aryan physical superiority and witness aryans losing to a
… (more)Not really into jocks and athletics but I do notice that Europeans built large sophisticated civilizations and added to the understanding of the physical universe and its fundamental laws. Possibly not as great an achievement as running really fast and jumping but technology does have its points.
Zeb MatteyHaha im not pitching races against eachother, merely pointing out an exception the the nazi theorem and wondering how or if they addressed such exceptions. Nobody is arguing about the significance of running versus other endeavours (me least of all, i wouldn’t personally put much value in athletics versus physics and understanding nature)
It could be argued that the German athletes who suffered defeats were just not feeling well on competition day and didn’t achieve their peak performance. That’s what I would say if I were a propaganda official in Nazi Germany
Alex MunroExcept ….they didn’t .
In a featured film in Germany about the Dassler Brothers (founders of Adidas and Puma sportware), it said that the Dassler had developed a high tech sports shoes that increased speed for runners, and that they wanted to give to Owens, who, because of the segregation laws, wasn't competing in the sam
… (more)it is true. The part about Nazi officials giving “reluctant” permission.
a because no such approval was needed
b the “reluctant” part seems contrived
A bit of both , I assume.
Dr Joseph Gobbels .
“ The perfect lie is 50 % fact and 50 % fiction “
This comment has been deleted · September 23, 2020
Adhir BoseDid I say that Gobbels was referring to his own actions? My point was that Gobbels was the original guru of fake news . And anyone can use his methods to promote their narrative.
Welcome to A Clash In The East: a space we seek to make into a thriving place of historical discussion and writing all focused on one subject.
The terrible and bloody tale of the Ostfront. Or the Great Patriotic War. Different names by different sides for the same hellish place.
This being a historical space, especially one concerning a controversial topic, there are a few guidelines that we expect everyone to adhere to when submitting or otherwise contributing content. Most of these should be obvious, but in any case, we want to make it clear.
- First of all, make sure that your post is true. We intend on seeing historical truth, not repeated myths and misconceptions or simple errors. This doesn’t mean that you’re not allowed to make any mistakes, of course, but the core content of your submission ought to be accurate to historical truth.
- Second, historical truth isn’t worth a lot when it can’t be understood. We require all content here to at least reach to reasonable standards of grammar, spelling and punctuation. A typo here and there is one thing, but if your content is not written in proper English with proper grammar, capitalization, spelling and all it will, obviously, not be accepted.
- Thirdly, we require all content posted to have a certain degree of effort put in. Of course, brevity is an useful tool, and needless verbosity doesn’t add anything to an answer- on the other hand, brevity is not the same thing as just writing barebones. Do not submit content that does not adequately explain its content matter with a reasonable degree of depth: we expect to see well researched, well written content here that genuinely contributes to the discussion and historical understanding of the reader.
- Fourth, we do not condone atrocities and other criminal acts. Content that defends, denies, or justifies atrocities committed in the Eastern Front, whether by the Axis or by the Soviets, will not be permitted.
With that settled, once again welcome to A Clash In The East- I hope you enjoy your stay.
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